Wives, Mistresses and Governesses, Girls' education in the 18th and 19th centuries

'I wish the singing master may not get one of my Lady Busby's daughters, which you know is commonly done'
(Lady Gardiner to Sir John Verney, 27 Nov. 1701.  Verney letters of the 18th century ed. Margaret Maria, Lady Verney, 2 vols, 1930, Vol. 1, p.165

 The Married Women's Property Act was passed in 1882.  Until then, in the U.K. the property of a married woman became her husband's  A husband might spend his wife's fortune any way he pleased and there was little her friends and relations, and the wife herself, could do about it though concerned fathers did attempt to tie up their daughters' money in dowries.  There was a great deal to be gained by seducing a young girl from a wealthy family into an a runaway marriage as Charles Wickham tries to run away with Mr. Darcy's sister in Pride and Prejudice.

Victorian girls at school
(Pinterest)

Girls from well-off and respectable families were still educated with marriage in mind, and a good marriage was still the best career option for most of these girls, though it certainly carried the high risk of early death in child-birth.  The standards for a good match were high; a spotless reputation, a respectable family, money, land, connections; intact virginity, beauty, if possible, though this could be negotiable.  Actual love and attraction was also becoming more important, unlike the frequent arranged marriages of earlier periods.  Jane Austen's novels revolve around these sensitive marriage negotiations, particularly Pride and Prejudice, (1813) which features Mrs. Bennet attempting the difficult task of marring off her five beautiful but not well off or well connected daughters.  The penniless opportunist Charles Wickham first attempts to capture wealthy Mr. Darcy's innocent young sister.  Then he 'ruins' the youngest Bennet girl, Lydia and has to be bought off to marry her.  This prejudices the rather slender prospects of Lydia's lovely but impoverished sisters with Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingham, but, in the novel, love does triumph over prejudice.

Becky Sharp, the anti-heroine of Thackray's Vanity Fair,(1847) by contrast, did her best to rise in the world by marriage,though she made the unfortunate mistake of marrying the penniless second son rather than the wealthy baronet who has taken her on as governess to his younger children.  Many 18th and 19th century novels revolve around young women attempting to rise in the world through marriage, or having their prospects in life ruined by its failure, and this is because marriage was so important.

As Charles Hotham wrote to his sixteen-year old daughter in the 1760s:
'The Natural Walk and Situation of Women is Marriage.  It will of Course be yours in common with the rest of your Sex.'
(The Hothams, being the chronicles of the Hothams of Scorborough, 1918, p.112.)

In fact this daughter did not marry.  Many girls from middle class families were not able to find a husband, and many, even after marriage, had to earn a living, often unexpectedly owing to fluctuations in the fortunes of their families.  For middle class girls working for a living was considered almost shameful.  Also, girls were not allowed to go to university or take degree examinations, and consequently professions were not open to them.  They might become governesses in well-off households, or teachers in schools.  Some of them set up schools themselves.

Hannah Moore (1745-1833) an exceptional woman of her time, was brought up by her father to earn her living as a teacher.  However her father stopped her maths lessons because she was progressing too fast.  She went on to teach for a time at her father's school, then became financially independent and a well-known bluestocking, intellectual, playwright,founded many Sunday Schools for the poor, campaigned against the slave trade, and wrote Strictures on the Modern System of  Female Education, 1779, Her view was that women need education to be wives and mothers and to contribute to society through charity work:

Hannah Moore, 1821, by H.W. Pickersgill
(Wikipedia)

'The profession of ladies, to which the bent of their instruction should be turned, is that of daughters, wives, mothers, and mistresses of families. They should be therefore trained with a view to these several conditions, and be furnished with a stock of ideas and principles, and qualifications ready to be applied and appropriated, as occasion may demand, to each of these respective situations; for though the arts which merely embellish life must claim admiration; yet when a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion whom he wants, and not an artist. It is not merely a creature who can paint, and play, and dress, and dance; it is a being who can comfort and counsel him; one who can reason and reflect, and feel, and judge, and discourse, and discriminate; one who can assist him in his affairs, lighten his cares, sooth his sorrows, strengthen his principles, and educate his children.'
(Hanah Moore, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 1779)

The influential educationalist and novelist Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) wrote:
'We cannot help thinking that their happiness is of more consequence than their speculative rights, and we wish to educate women so that they may be happy in the situations in which they are most likely to be placed...'
(Maria Edgeworth, Practical Education, 2nd ed. 1801 p 259)

It was not considered lady-like for a girl to be too well-educated.  Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762) secretly educated herself in her father's library.  Probably writing of her own bitter experience, she advised her granddaughter to: 
'conceal whatever learning she attains with as much solicitude as she would hide crookedness or lameness; the parade of it can only serve to draw on her the envy and consequently the most inveterate hatred of all he and she fools....'(Mary C. Borer, Willingly to school, a history of women's education 1976 p.122)

What was school life like for girls?  Mary Borer cites a fashionable girls' boarding school in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, London, called the 'young ladies Eton'.  In 1781 it had 220 pupils age six to sixteen, the fees were over 100 guineas a year.  The girls were schooled in manners, dancing,  history, French and  manners; surprisingly they learned how to use make-up and had their hair fashionably powdered.
(Borer p.185)

Fashionable young ladies
(The School Run, Google)

Not everyone approved:
'Is it surprising that a girl when grown up should starve herself into shapefulness and overspread her face with paint who was trained at boarding school to swing daily by the chin in order to lengthen her neck and accustomed to peculiar modes of discipline contrived to heighten the complexion?'
(Thomas Grisborne, An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, 1797, quoted in Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred, Girls' Education in English History, 1965, p. 126)

Another expensive girls' boarding school was 32 Brunswick Terrace, Brighton.  In 1836 the fees were £1000 for two years.  There Francis Power Cobbe studied French, Italian, German, music, manners and dress; the girls were trained to wear full evening dress and wore corsets.  They also studied  drawing, conversation, English, maths, history, geography, had some lessons on science and took regular exercise.  Francis Power Cobbe complained about the food; nothing new there then.
 (Borer p.238)

Mary Vivian Hughes (1866-1956)  described her mother's education at a finishing school in Bath in the mid 19th century.  There were only six pupils. They had visiting masters for French, music and philosophy, and learned good French, Latin and general knowledge.  The school was very strict on what might be considered good manners.  Before the girls went out to tea with anyone they had to eat a plate of thick bread and butter, so that they could show elegant appetites by leaving something on the plate.
(A London Child of the 1870s, 1934, p.44)

Mrs. Trimmer (1741-1810), children's author, and founder of The Guardian of Education, had some critical things to say about those French teachers:
'In the course of a few years the knowledge of the French language was considered as an indispensable part of a polite education, and French masters and governesses were encouraged to come to England as adventurers; these were frequently very low-bred persons of depraved morals, and ignorant of every thing essentially requisite for the important task of educating youth; but they were eagerly engaged by an infatuated people, both for schools and private families...'
(The Guardian of Education, Vol. 1, 1802 p.7 Internet edition available)

The Guardian of Education
(Wikimedia)

 Mary Hughes herself went to the North London Collegiate School and wrote two excellent books on women's life and education: A London Child of the 1870s, A London Girl of the 1880s.

Many girls were educated at home by governesses. Lady Caroline Russell, daughter of the Duke of Bedford,  came from a very wealthy family.  She had:
'...a writing master, music, dancing, French, Italian, singing and harpsichord and guitar.  She was presented at Court aged fifteen in 1758:
'Mama desires me to add to this that...the Prince of Wales thinks me very pretty...I was against writing you this for fear you should think me a saucy, vain Puss.'
Her brother, Lord Tavistock, was sent to Westminster school though his father and grandfather had been taught at home by tutors.
(Gladys Thomson, The Russells in Bloomsbury, 1669-1771, 1940, p. 293)

Here is an extract from the Heber letters, 1796, written during the upheavals following the French Revolution, about hiring a governess for little Mary:
'There are plenty of emigrant ladies, some of the rank of Viscountess, to be had, but I think you could not prefer a French-woman, and I am sure would not take a Roman Catholic into your house.  We have just hired a governess for Mary Ann...She undertakes to instruct her pupils in English, French, Geography, Music, Writing and Arithmetic, all for £40 a year'
(R.H. Cholmondeley, ed. The Heber Letters, 1787-1832, pub. 1950)


 What of the less well-off? Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) in  Jane Eyre, 1847, wrote one of the most famous descriptions of Victorian girls at school.  Lowood  was based on the Clergy Daughter's School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire.  Many clergy were not well off, and would send their daughters to be educated at such boarding schools.  Charlotte Bronte described:

' ...a wide, long room, with great deal tables, two at each end, on each of which burnt a pair of candles, and seated all round on benches, a congregation of girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty.  Seen by the dim light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless, though not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores.
There were four classes in the room, divided by age.  Charlotte Bronte describes their studies:

'The superintendent of Lowood (for such was this lady) having taken her seat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables, summoned the first class round her, and commenced giving a lesson on geography; the lower classes were called by the teachers: repetitions in history, grammar, &c., went on for an hour; writing and arithmetic succeeded, and music lessons were given by Miss Temple to some of the elder girls.'
The girls also learned French and spent a lot of their time on Bible study.  The school was strict, cold, the food was very poor, and their time at the school gave the Bronte sisters the TB which eventually killed them.
(Jane Eyre, 1847. Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

The original Cowan Bridge school cottages
(Wikimedia)

 Alison Uttley was born in 1884 into a middle class family in Derbyshire.  She eventually won a scholarship to Manchester University and, in 1906, was their second woman honours graduate.  In her autobiography, she described her school life:

'...fifty children had lessons in the long open room.  On the walls were glass cases full of geological specimens, grey, brown and black stones, sparkling stones, bright green malachite, fossils and shells...little classes of children, each with a pupil teacher, sat along the room and in the centre sat the headmaster at his desk...By his side was the cane with which he swished the hands of unfortunate children....The lessons, the games , the singing and music, the open-air drill when little girls used wands and boys iron dumb-bells, all made a new and wonderful life for me.'
But: 'Little boys had school gardens, little girls sewed calico, little boys learned geography.'
(Aliso Uttley, Ambush of Young Days, 1937 p.159)

Vanity Fair, 1847, by W. Makepeace Thackeray,  opens with Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharpe leaving their boarding school.  Amelia Sedley was a model pupil:
'In music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of embroidery and needlework, she will be found to have realised her friends' fondest wishes.  In geography there is still much to be desired; and a careful and undeviating use of the backboard, four hours daily during the next three years, is recommended as necessary to the acquirement of that dignified deportment and carriage, so requisite for every young lady of fashion....In the principles of religion and morality Miss Sedley ...also satisfied the Misses Pinkerton'
W.M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 1847, p.2

Vanity Fair
(Wikipedia)

Mrs. Sherwood,(1755-1851) author of many improving books for children, was the daughter of a clergyman.  She learned French, Latin and Greek at the School for Girls at Reading Abbey which Jane Austen (1775-1817) also attended.  She had to wear a backboard, as recommended for Amelia:
'It was the fashion then for children (girls) to wear iron collars round the neck, with a backboard strapped over the shoulders: to one of these I was subjected from my sixth to my thirteenth year.  It was put on in the morning, and seldom taken off till late in the evening; and I generally did all my lesons standing in stocks, with this still collar round my neck'
(Life of Mrs. Sherwood, 1857, p. 37, Internet edition available)

The Sherwood family became short of money and Mrs. Sherwood opened a boarding school herself, teaching English, French, astronomy, grammar, writing and arithmetic.
Financial uncertainties led to many women finding themselves having to earn a living, and many became governesses, earning around £30 a year in the mid 19th century.  This was not very much, though more than a servant would earn, and governesses needed to be educated.   In 1848 Queen's College opened for girls over twelve, also offering evening classes.  This offered teaching to the equivalent of a university standard.  The redoubtable Dorothea Beale (1831-1906) studied there.  She went on to develop the exclusive Cheltenham Ladies College, founded in 1854.  Dorothea Beale also set up the first training colleges for women teachers.  'Good education is a sort of insurance', she said.
(see Schools Inquiry Commission Report on the Education of Girls, 1867-8, internet edition available, it makes very interesting reading)

Dorothea Beale
(Wikipedia)

Frances Buss was a contemporary of Dorothea Beale at Queen's College.  She also found herself teaching to support her family, and made an equally significant contribution to girls education.  She became Principal of Queen's College, later re-named North London Collegiate School for Ladies, and campaigned for the rights of girls to take public examinations and attend universities.  Like Dorothea Beale she was involved in setting up teacher training colleges.

Frances Buss
(Wikipedia)

The SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) tried to improve the lives of the poor, and found that many women with no maths skills had, not surprisingly,  problems getting work in shops.  The Society  began book-keeping classes which led to founding the Langham Place Ladies Institute. which led to Barbara Bodichon founding the Society for the Employment of Women in 1859.  Not only the poor benefited, Emily Davies  and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson met there, going on to fight for women's suffrage,  equal access to schools endowment funds which had been diverted to supporting boys' schools,  university education for girls, and the rights of women to work as doctors and surgeons.   (Internet, Langham Place Ladies Institute; Borer p. 273; Wikipedia)

The advances in girls' education were probably influenced by what was happening in the USA. There a number of all-female colleges were opened from the 1830s on; Georgia Female College, founded 1839, claims to be the first university chartered to award degrees to women.  The USA was much in advance of the U.K. in both girls education and women's suffrage.

'Dullness is not healthy, it points to general malingering, headaches, hysteria, langour.  All we claim is that the intelligence of women, be it great or small, shall have full and free development'
(Emily Davies, Paper at the Social Science Association, York, read by Mr. J. G. Fitch, since as a woman she could not read it herself, 1864.  Quoted in Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred, 1965  This was an extremely important paper, arguing for the re-distribution of charity school endowment funds, intended for the support of both girls and boys schooling, but appropriated almost exclusively to boys public schools.  She and Frances Buss went on to argue the case in front of the Schools Inquiry Commissioners, who were struck by their 'perfect womanliness, possibly due to Frances Buss being struck almost speechless with nerves)

Dorothea Beale cunningly said that girls' education was for:
'the cultivation and improvement of the mental and moral capacities with which they had been endowed for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.'
( Reports issued by the Schools' Inquiry Commission on the Education of Girls by D Beale, Principal of the Ladies' College, Cheltenham,1870)

Cheltenham Ladies College
(Wikipedia)

The Girls' Own Paper, a periodical published by the Religious Tract Society for these newly educated girls, opened in 1880.  It was an entirely new and progressive paper, including articles on independent girls at work, in professions such as nursing and clerical work.  Vol. 20, 1898-9, has a story about 'Three girl-chums and their life in London rooms...with accounts of basic necessities:
'Ada is a type-writer in a very good office in the City.  She has got on so well that she is earning £100 a year'.  Jane is a cookery teacher in a distant parish, and they  trained at Pitman's and a cookery school.  Marion teaches music and does the housework, earning £60 a year and £30 left to her.  The apartment costs 15/- (75p) a week and they have a maid from a National School.

The Girls' Own Paper, masthead, 1886
(Wikipedia)

Angela Brazil (1868-1947) built her writing career on writing stories set in the new girls boarding schools, making them in the process glamorous places that girls longed to be sent to:

'"Isn't it withering?" she remarked.  "And just on the very afternoon when we'd made up our minds to decode the tennis championship and secured all the courts for the lower school.  I do call it the most wretched luck! I'm a blighted blossom."'
(Angela Brazil, The Leader of the Lower School, 1913 p.10
See Mary Cadogan, You're a brick, Angela! A new look at girls'fiction from 1839 to 1975,  pub. 1976)

Angela Brazil
(Wikipedia)

So the girls got their act together and did something about girls' education.  They did rather better than the boys.

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