So, if you were a girl growing up in the
Regency Era, preparing to go live your own heroine life of Jane Austen novel
and enter the marriage market one thing you would essentially need is education. Because to be highly marriageable in
this era, you have to at least know how to read, write and of course dance. But how do you get that education? Well, in the Regency Era, there were
three main methods for girls to get a little bit of education and we'll
be going into those in today's video. My name is Ellie Dashwood and this
is my channel where I talk about classic literature and history. If you like, either of those
things, please subscribe. So girl's education in the Regency
Era, well, it's definitely one thing, not standardized at all. In every single one of these methods,
the standards were all over the place. You got, what you got and hopefully
it was semi-decent back in the day. The three main methods were of course,
parents teaching their daughters at home, having a governess come
in and live with the family and teach the daughters or daughters
being sent away to boarding school. So we'll be going into
each of those today. And we're going to be talking about
what this education really was. What were these girls learning
through these different methods? So, first up is teaching
daughters at home. Now this is of course would be known
today as homeschooling your kids. But again, there was no curriculum. There was no online school to reference. Mothers just have free reign to
do whatever they wanted or really not do anything if they wanted to. Basically mothers would teach their
daughters the basics of reading, writing, sewing, and of course dancing. Usually a dance master would be
brought in for that, but we'll talk about that in a minute. But as you can see, part of
the problem with this form of education was you would only know
as much as your mother ever knew. So if she wasn't very well educated. Well, that's the extent of it
unless they brought in extra master's to teach you something. And another major issue is
even if she knew a lot, was she dedicated to teaching you? I think it's very interesting, this
quote from Pride and Prejudice. Because of course, this is the form
of education the Bennet girls got when Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Elizabeth
are discussing their education. Lady Catherine de Bourgh says, "Then who
taught you, who attended to you without a governess you must have been neglected." So of course it's like you
don't have a governess. You were neglected. And Elizabeth says,
"Compared to some families. I believe we were, but such of us as
wished to learn, never wanted the means. We were always encouraged to read and
had all the masters that were necessary. Those who chose to be
idle certainly might." Of course, here we see Mrs. Bennet wasn't super dedicated
to her daughter's education, but they were encouraged to read. And they would, of course, have brought
in extra masters on certain subjects. Here we see this theme that I think
runs through a lot of Jane Austen's novels about reading, really being a
main source of education for women. We see Fanny in Mansfield Park, a lot
of her education comes from being guided in her reading by her cousin Edmund. Elizabeth Bennet reads a lot. We see what type of education Catherine
Morland gets through reading in Northanger Abbey, which is interesting because
even though she does talk about reading these very sensational novels of the
time, she also discussed the fact that she hates reading serious history. So much work. In fact, at the very beginning
of Northanger Abbey, we see this overview over the reading and history
that the Catherine has to learn to become educated, including memorizing
some quotes from famous works. So then let's talk about these
masters that a family might bring in. While the mom would, of course,
teach them reading, writing basic arithmetic, give them books to read. These masters would fill in
different gaps in their education, including for example, penmanship. Jane Austen's cousin, Eliza had a
penmanship master come in to correct her very awful writing apparently as a child. Other masters, would of course include
things like French, drawing, music, and also very interestingly dancing. Having a dance master during this time
period was essential because of course as Jane Austen said to be fond of dancing was
a certain step towards falling in love. So what a dance master would do is
they would come in and they would hold dance classes for, of course,
all the daughters of the family, or maybe some of the surrounding families. And all of the sisters in a
family would learn to dance together and practice at home. So then when the balls
eventually came, they'd be ready. They'd be like me and my sister
have been practicing this. Now I can actually go dance with Mr. Darcy. I've got this down. Of course, these masters would just
come in, give private lessons at a fee and then leave while the main source
of the education was from the mother. And this is the sort of education we
see in many of Jane Austen's works, including Pride and Prejudice, Sense
and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey. Okay, up next would be governesses. Now I'm not going to go into this
one too much, because I already did a very extensive video on governesses
that you can check out here. But of course, a governess was a
teacher that would come and actually live with the family and teach
those daughters everything that they needed to know to be a lady. And as Lady Catherine de Bourgh
pointed out in that quotation we already read, they would have stayed
on top of those girls not being idle. And of course we see governesses
in Mansfield Park and Emma. Now let's talk about the third
method of education, which would have been going to school. And usually these were boarding schools. Of course, if you lived close enough to a
boarding school, you could just go there during the day and then go home at night. That was the sort of education
we see Evelina in Francis Burney's Evelina getting. Of course, if you haven't heard
of Evelina, it is a great book and I did a review of that you
should definitely check out here. So what were the schools. Again? Major note, no standardization
of schools at all. Basically what the schools had to
offer was whatever they felt like parents wanted their daughters to know. And of course these parents wanted their
daughters to know whatever would make the marriageable when they were older. So that is the type of curriculum
they would be aiming for. But of course, who would
be running these schools? Where did they really come from? Because there was no
school district like today. Like in my city, there's
a school district. There's a school like every so many blocks
and they all look exactly the same because they have the same architectural plans. Well, that is not how schools were
of course made in the Regency Era. Basically a school was ran by a
woman who would be a governess. She meets those qualifications for
being a governess like I talked about in the governess video. She is either young and single
or perhaps she is widowed. Occasionally a married couple that
falls on hard times would open up a boarding school together. But overall, it was the governess set. Now what made these governesses different
was the fact that they somehow had enough money to initially rent a house. So some governesses would save up
their income while working as a governess so that they could open a
boarding school later in their life. Or they would team up with maybe
two or three other governesses to collectively open a school. And so what these women would
do is they would find a house. They would rent it. They would be like, "We are
now our boarding school. Does...who wants to send
their daughters here?" Or of course, if a widow whose husband
died and she needs money and she already has a house, then she's like,
"Hey, who wants to live with me? I decided I'm a boarding school now." And of course, occasionally more thought
was put into opening a boarding school, but overall that was sort of boarding
school level of excellence that you would see and Jane Austen's time. Now, Jane Austen actually went to a
very well established and well run boarding school at one point in her life. I'm going to go into that
in a whole different video because so much to say there. But today we're just going to be talking
about boarding schools in general. So of course, why would a family
want to send their daughters to one of these schools? A major answer being to keep them out of
the way as Jane Austen says in Emma, that they could be put out of the way and get
themselves into a little bit of education. And another thing, these schools
usually offered the appeal of having a bunch of masters at hand. So instead of these parents having to
be like, "Okay, now I have to go hire French master and a dancing master and
the art master to come to my house." It was like, "If I sent her to this
school, they already have those masters coming to the school on a regular basis. So I don't have to worry about
it, but she still gets the benefit of all of these masters." And of course, some of the top girls
schools in London, were like, "We will transform your daughter into the most
refined, poised lady of them all." And so it was also kind of
a status thing a little bit. What was going to these schools like? Well, they usually ranged between
40 and 60 girls at a school . They were housed two to a bed with
multiple beds in the same bedroom. A lot of them had horrible conditions. Some of them were better overall. Again, it was such a range. You really had to look into
the particular institution. There was no inspector coming in,
regulating the store of stuff. Which sort of leads us into what was
some of the problems of sending your daughters off to these boarding schools? One is that, of course, the
class system and bullying existed within a boarding school. So you may have seen this term before
a parlour boarder, which comes both up in Emma, that's what Harriet is. And also in A Little Princess by Frances
Hodgson Burnett, that's what Sarah is. And parlour border was it was
essentially, you were rich. You were fancy. Your parent was paying extra for
special treatment and you are the top of the social pecking order now. Of course, they just got extra
perks, better living arrangements. They got special dinner privileges and
they essentially, if this was an airplane, they were in first class while all the
other students were just in standard. And then, which is of course, I think
one of the reasons why Emma is so certain that Harriet has to come from
money because she is a parlour boarder. Yep. Money. When you combine this class system with
of course, adolescents girls tendency to bully each other anyway bullying
definitely happened at these schools. And it was all dependent on the teachers
to try to regulate that if they could. And of course, again, you got
what you got at these schools on how well they did that. Which is another thing is if you
or your daughter was going to one of these boarding schools,
you might be on starvation diets because depending on the school. Because really girls schools were not
able to charge very high rates usually. You already have these really
poor women running them. They didn't have a lot of money to
spend on food for all these girls. So some of these schools, the girls
just didn't get that much food. Another downside would be epidemics
running through the school, whether it was like Jane Austen's brush with typhus or
smallpox or the measles, whatever it was. Of course like modern schools today
where diseases just go through the whole student population, here, you
had girls often in questionable living conditions getting sick because they're
all staying two to a bed as a group. And of course another problem was,
again, there's no standardization. Who knows what these
girls are getting taught. And loneliness. Girls getting sent off at a young age
to live with a bunch of strangers is a recipe for them being very lonely and sad. And just a final one, which I think
is kind of funny is these schools, especially the super fashionable ones
in London could lead your daughters into the way of vanity and low morals. We see this addressed, both
in Jane Austen's works and also in Fordyce's Sermon. I'll read you this quote about
girls' schools from Fordyce's Sermon. It says, "I say mostly for there
are exceptions and such as do the mistresses of the schools real honor. Need I mentioned that making for those
allowances, they learn chiefly to dress, to dance, to speak bad French,
to prattle much nonsense, to practice I know not how many pert conceited airs
and in consequence of all to conclude themselves very accomplished women. I say nothing here of the alarming
suggestions, I've heard as to the corruption of their morals." So of course, if you're sending
your daughter off to one of those girls school who knows
what conceited airs and corrupted morals they might come back with. So those are the three main methods
of educating girls back then. Teaching them at home, hiring a governess,
or sending them off to a boarding school. But in all of these methods,
basically what they needed to learn subject wise was the same. So now let's talk about
what were they learning. Now, I broke it down into
a few different categories. The first one was accomplishments. The number one accomplishment as
I've talked about before is dancing. Now of course, dancing also helps
with romance, but it was also expected to be a good form of exercise. And it was supposed to give you
grace and good deportment and just overall refine your air. So again, on deportment, some of
these fashionable girls schools had back boards to keep you standing up
straight and correct your posture so that you would come off very
proper and ladylike at all times. Next up would be music. Whether it's playing the piano or
learning how to sing or playing the harp. Basically knowing how to do some
form of musical accomplishment was a huge plus during the Regency time. We would have some sort of art, whether
it was sketching or water colors. Which watercolors at the time were
dominated by women while oil painting was considered more of a male thing. Or drawing in pastels. And finally, if you went to a girls
school, they would put on some dramas. You could get a little
bit of a taste of acting. And really, we see all of these things
coming up again and again in Jane Austen's novels, whether it's Marianne
playing the piano, Elinor's art. We see Emma painting Harriet. We see Miss Crawford playing her harp. Whatever it is, these accomplishments
just came up over and over and over again. The next major thing a girl would need
to know is a foreign language, preferably French, but also German and Italian were
popular languages for a girl to learn. And we definitely can't forget
the great art of sewing. Now sewing might seem like, "Oh,
well, if you need your socks darned you'd have your servant do that." And that's true, you, you would have your
servant do that if you were of this class. But basically sewing was something
known from the very bottom of society among women to the very top of society. Of course, what they would
be sewing was very different. Whether they would be trimming
up their bonnets or they would be embroidering their handkerchiefs,
but all women needed how to sew. And we actually see this in Sense
and Sensibility, when it talks about the character, Charlotte, it says... it says, that over the mantle piece of
Charlotte's room hung "a landscape in colored silks of her performance and
proof of her having spent seven years at a great school in town to some effect." So she went to a great school in town. And what did she have to show for it? She could do a landscape in colored silks. So very womanly and accomplished there. So now if we get down to the nitty
gritty of the actual sort of Scholastic categories, we have English, of
grammar and writing and penmanship. As I talked about with Eliza,
having a penmanship tutor coming in. And also, the extensive reading
was obviously encouraged of serious works, not novels. Novels were looked down
upon during the time. They needed to read
those serious histories. Now, when it came to subjects like
history, geography and science, they actually had textbooks for this. One, which was popular at the
time, from what I gather, was called Historical and Miscellaneous
Questions for the Use of Young People. And what it was is, was chapters and
chapters of questions and answers. Which is an interesting sort
of teaching method here. So a lot of it really would just
be memorization from this book. And it had these great questions. I'll give you an example here. I thought this one was funny. It's talking about the history of
Europe and what England was like back when they were starting to build
civilizations in Egypt and stuff. So the question is, "In what state
was Europe at this early period?" And the answer that the
kid needed to memorize was: "The inhabitants were savage,
wild and barbarous, totally uninstructed and uninformed, having
little or no intercourse with the civilized part of mankind." That's what early Europe was like,
according to Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People. Of course, they would also study
the history of the Royal line and the different Kings and Queens and
their accomplishments in England. I really loved Jane Austen's satire
of this she wrote as a child that she titled the History of England from the
Reign of Henry the Fourth to the Death of Charles the First by a Partial,
Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian. So clearly young Jane Austen had
been studying these exact things. They would study the English
constitution and government as also part of this question and answer book. Where they learn the answers to questions
like, "What powers does the King have?" These girls would have also studied
geography, both facts about geography, and it was also common practice to cut
up maps and have your kids put them back together again, like a puzzle. We see those mentioned in Mansfield
Park where Fanny's cousins go to tell their mom about how dumb Fanny is. And they're like, "Dear mama, only
think my cousin can not put the map of Europe together, or my cousin can not
tell the principle rivers in Russia or she never heard of Asia minor,
or she does not know the difference between water colors and crayons. How strange. Did you ever hear anything so stupid?" Fanny can't even put the map
of Europe back together again. What has Fanny been doing her whole life? Probably not being rich. But that's a whole other topic. And of course, when it comes to
science, they would learn things like botany, perhaps, astronomy, learning
the different star constellations, and maybe some basics of where
different sorts of metals come from. Where the major sources
of gold in the world are. And that sort of thing. Now, of course, while teaching these
girls, all of these important things, there's something you definitely
did not want to do, which was make them too smart, too educated. Because being too smart and too educated,
really defeminized women at the time. It thought that it would make
her essentially behave like a man and it would make it very hard
for her to ever catch a husband. For an example of this in Evelina,
we read of a woman who has spent a long time trying to study and
be a scholar, like all of the men. And this is what it has to say
of her, "She is extremely clever. Her understanding indeed, maybe
called masculine, but unfortunately her manners deserve the same epitaph. For in studying to acquire the
knowledge of the other sex, she has lost all the softness of her own." I mean, you just can't get to learned
until you just ended up being a man. Cause apparently knowing a
lot of stuff is what sets men apart from women in this era? And this was a common belief
during the time period. Which was, if you educated your
daughter too much, you were actually doing her a disservice. So she would definitely
not want to get too smart. Otherwise that would defeat the whole
purpose of her becoming accomplished, which is to find a husband. So how did girls growing up in
Jane Austen's time get educated? Well, through one of the main three ways
of either at home, from their mother with masters coming in to help some. By hiring a governess. Or by sending them off to boarding school. If you lived back in Regency times,
which of these methods would you prefer? Would you want your mom to homeschool you? Would you take your chances of dying
from an epidemic in boarding school? Or would you have a governess? Let me know in the comments below
and also keep having an awesome day. Cause you're awesome. Bye. Now, why would a family want to send
their daughters to one of these schools? Sorry, this ring light
is like blinding me. When I close my eyes. I see, like this giant circle of light. Okay. I got a ring light if you can't see
by the huge circles in my eyes, but we're going to see how this works. Okay. Let me look down here for a second.
