The Education Of Women By Frances Power Cobbe

Throughout this course, we learned that women’s studies originated as a concern at the time that “women and men noticed the absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women [in addition to] the ways women were systematically excluded from many positions of power and authority” (Shaw, Lee 1). In the past, men had more privileges than women. Women have battled for centuries against certain patterns of inadequacy that all women experience. Every culture and customs has divergent female

Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes reveals the struggles women had in the 17th-18th centuries when it came to equal education opportunities. Women were expected to become people of domestication while men had many opportunities to expand their minds and be ambitious, and be leaders. Women were expected to focus on taking care of their family, not to have minds of their own. They wanted change.

In early America, women were expected to take care of the household and of the children. However, writers such as Anne Bradstreet and Judith Sargent Murray wanted to emphasize the importance of education for women. The two texts by these authors that will be discussed are the poem, “The Prologue” by Anne Bradstreet and the essay, “Desultory Thoughts upon the Utility of Encouraging a Degree of Self-Contemplacency, especially in Female Bosoms,” By Judith Sargent Murray. A theme seen prominently throughout both texts is fairer treatment of women through education. Although both women do believe in opportunity for women in education, Bradstreet focuses more on the idea that women should have more acceptance in the intellectual world by men while Murray however, emphasizes the importance of women to be raised properly which resulted in them understanding their self-worth.

After decades of coping with the doubt and the regulation that women could not be educated, a number of women began to revolt. The women felt they too should be highly educated just the same as the men. They protested against the fact that men could go to college and this was not allowed for them and wanted the right to learn (Westward Expansion 1). Women wanted to be educated to better and to prove themselves solid. Schools for women began to up rise and gain some admiration in the 1820’s (The American Pageant 327). 1818 a lady by the name of Emma Willard, made a request to the legislature of New York, to fund a education for women. She got support from President Thomas Jefferson and The Common Council, in which she received four thousand dollars to fund in a school she later opened in the 1820’s, called, Troy Female Seminary (Westward Expansion 1). Soon after many schools began to come up, and Oberlin College, in Ohio, became the first college to accept men and women (Westward Expansion 1). In the turn of the nineteenth century, more and more thoughts and ideas of education for women became topic of interest. Political ideals scoped support for the better education for women, because leaders of policies of education and political issues seemed to feel that there need to be citizens with a creditable history of

And they can be equals if they believe they are. The basis of this essay is that knowledge is the solution to possessing value. In On the Equality of the Sexes, she believes women to be slandered in society, and they are only known to be inferior to men simply because men have an unjust difference in education. She declares that an educated woman would only increase her domestic skills and rational thoughts. In Observations on Female Abilities, she amasses an enormous amount of concrete detail to prove the general points she made earlier. Murray was clearly optimistic about the prospects of American women in 1798, imagining that a new era of gender equality was dawning in this "younger world." Yet again, as in her other essays on women's issues, Murray argues that women are rational beings, capable of exhibiting the traits associated with Republican citizenship. Once again she maintains that educated women make the most virtuous mothers and wives. At the same time, she continues to insist that women can be brave, strong, and heroic as well as modest, religious, and chaste.

“Look at us! We’re just like everyone else. We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion; this idea that you have to settle down and resign from life.” (April Wheeler, Revolutionary Road). It has become a society norm that women are meant to serve housewives; to cook, clean, garden, and nurture children, even though they are much more capable of other things. The role of women is greatly overseen, as they are not perceived to be of their full potential, rather than as societies idealistic expectation. This is because men and those who are wealthy are unable to look past gender and accept women as of equal significance.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous book, Vindication of the Rights of Women, is “one of the earliest expressions of a feminist consciousness.” Wollstonecraft claims that women are upset mainly due to the fact that they are not receiving the education they deserve, and goes on to explain how women are notorious for being weak, and mentally unstable. She blames the education system for this since all the books are written by men, and they claim that women are barley humans and are treated as another species. She questions the eligibility of men to claim they are better than women. A useful education, in her opinion, is one that teaches students how to be strong and independent. Her directed audience is anyone who is unsure of the true definition and meaning of feminism. Wollstonecraft believes that all humans are capable of the same intelligence, no matter the gender. Her overall idea is that every individual, both male and female, deserve equality.

Articles written during a specific period gives the future population an idea of the issues present during that time. Before the United States became independent, woman education was limited to the skill needed to be a good wife and proper mother. Particularly, upper-class woman were the only ones that had the resources to gain an education. Most middle and lower class focus primarily on the education of their males. European education influence Colonial America’s educational system. Since there weren’t any establish convents schools in the colonies, tutors were primarily hired and later on schools were incorporated. During the first years of schooling, new England girls went to a coed school called “dame school”. In the dame school, girls were thought to knit and sew. Many girls got the chance to go to the town school. However, some town school in new England prohibited girls from attending. In the south, girls got the

In her next chapter, Kerber examines the newfound need for the educating of women. Women were not allowed freedom or a political opinion, but they could not be completely pushed aside. For years women had been taught that education made them undesirable to men and educated women were scorned. Kerber argues that a new need for

As a woman myself, it is hard to imagine a time when I would not have been allowed to attend college, let alone be writing this paper. As children most of us heard stories from our grandparent’s about what life was like they were young. I can remember laughing at the thought of “walking up hill both ways” to get to school. With the liberties American Women have today, it is easy to take for granted everything the women before us fought so hard for. It is easy to forget the treatment they suffered in their struggle to bring us to today. In this paper we will examine the lives, struggles, and small victories of women that have led us to

The foundation of colleges for women as well as events at women’s rights conventions intellectually challenged society’s views on women’s traditional roles. As education became more of a public governmental service, the educational

In the modern-day society, education is an equal part for men and women. The difference between the two is rarely seen today. However, in the 1700’s the idea that women should have an education, or the ability to hold an education was a topic that was merely laughed at. Being so, what went into the female brain was solely up to the males of society. Wollstonecraft depicts that women unknowingly subject themselves to men and their sphere because society educates them to do so.

Moreover, this unexplained misery the women in the 1900s felt, all had one thing in common, they were all housewives. Similarly, in The Americans textbook (2006), it is shown that a significant portion of the women in college share the same idea, in the end. In an interview with women from Stanford University, it is shown that, “Of graduates in 1965, 70 percent planned not to work at all when their children were of preschool

Surely, she craved to write—meaning to work here—endangered her husband’s position as an authority. He would not have control any longer toward the narrator—his wife. In the 19th century upper class and middle class women were not expected to earn their own living. Women rarely had careers and most professions refused entry to women. In the middle of the 19th century it was virtually impossible for women to become doctors, engineers, architects, accountants or bankers. After a long struggle the medical profession allowed women to become doctors. It was not until 1910 that women were allowed to become accountants and bankers. However, there were still no women diplomats, barristers or judges. Women were allowed to become teachers majority of women became teaches but this was also a low paying job.

The late 18th century can be known as the historical period of the Enlightenment. During this time, society was undergoing drastic changes that would impact people even today. These changes were known as “reforms,” and played a big role in politics and ruling during this time period. One of the bigger reforms of this time was that which would grant women a higher education and place them in a position closer to their male counterparts. The enlightenment authors, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft, took part in a debate in which they argued about the purpose and education of women. In an article recently written in The New York Times by Nicholas