Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Education/Boarding School/Girls
Many families with social ambitions sent daughters away to school, but a girl’s boarding school was far different from that of the boys. In the girls boarding school less emphasis was placed on academic subjects and more was placed on accomplishments.[1] This is at least partially to blame on the fact that some people of this time believed that intellectual pursuits caused a woman’s insanity. [2] These private schools for girls seem to have been a creation of the early seventeenth century; [3] they definitely expanded drastically during this period.[4] These private schools often had proprietresses who were governesses or managers, but they hired specialized male teachers and did not teach themselves.[5] The overall impression from this period is that these boarding schools took the girls off their parents hands during adolescence and taught them a command of English, French, dancing, singing, instrumental music, drawing, painting and ornamental craftwork such as needlepoint.[6] These are all things that would make them attractive wives to most prospective husbands of the gentry and nobility.