The Schooling of Girls in Britain and Ireland, 1800- 1900 [Hardcover]

This book compares the formal education of the majority of girls in Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century. Previous books about Britain invariably focus on England, and such British studies tend not to include Ireland despite its incorporation into the Union in 1801. The Schooling of Girls in Britain and Ireland, 1800-1900presents a comparative synthesis of the schooling of working and middle-class girls in the Victorian period, with the emphasis on the interaction of gender, social class, religion and nationality across the UK. It reveals similarities as well as differences between both the social classes and the constituent parts of the Union, including strikingly similar concerns about whether working-class girls could fulfill their domestic responsibilities. What they had in common with middle-class girls was that they were to be educated for the good of others. This study shows how middle-class women used educational reform to carve a public role for themselves on the basis of a domesticated life for their lower class sisters, confirming that Victorian feminism was both empowering and constraining by reinforcing conventional gender stereotypes.

1. Introduction  2. Gender and Social Control in the Education of Working-Class Girls  3. The Education of Young Ladies  4. The Making of a Female Teacher  5. Conclusion  Notes Bibliography  Index

Jane McDermidis Reader in Womens and Gender History at Southampton University. She is the author of The Schooling of Working-Class Girls in Victorian Scotland: Gender, Education and Identity(Routledge, 2005) and has served on the Steering Committee of the UKs Womens History Network, 2005-09.