ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with two themes, cookery in the curriculum, and celibacy as a chosen lifestyle, which may seem to be unconnected. In fact, the controversial nature of women’s education between 1845 and 1945 was partly due to the changing relationships between domesticity and careers, and also between marriage and celibacy, which the various protagonists were championing. Underlying the debates about the place of domestic skills and virtues in women’s education, and about whether education unfitted ladies for marriage, were some deep seated fears about pollution of the sexes and their spheres. This chapter looks at the arguments over cookery and sewing for girls, over celibacy for adult women, and over fears that the practice of women entering universities and occupations was a form of Delilahism (i.e. weakening the structures to bring them down) that would result in a new race of Amazons or hermaphrodites. Kenealy wanted a domestic education for girls to protect their sexuality, domesticity and nurturance, and to safeguard the future of the race. Buss was against domestic subjects for the
clever girl who could qualify as a dentist or lawyer and employ someone else to make her cakes for her. The battle lines drawn up in the second half of the nineteenth century are still affecting us today as are the deep-seated fears of Delilahism and hermaphrodites.
