The Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century
Debate on Female Education
In 1804 the female academy remained only an imaginative and literary possibility and it was in this year that the novelist and educationalist, Maria Edgeworth, wrote about the education of women to the poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Edgeworth suggested that a 'periodical paper, to be written entirely by ladies, would succeed'. Edgeworth encouraged Barbauld to join her and 'all the literary ladies' in this venture. Barbauld's reply raised some objections:
'All the literary ladies ! Mercy on us ! ... There is no bond of union among literary women, any more than among literary men'.
Barbauld's words remind us that at the beginning of the nineteenth century as much divided women writers as united them. Nevertheless, the women represented in this part of the exhibition had one aim in common: they wished to improve women's lot and usefulness to society by improving female education.
The ways in which this should be achieved were not agreed on. Some promoted schools for girls. Others preferred a domestic education under a mother's supervision at home. Conservative commentators emphasized attention to accomplishments - music, dancing, French, drawing: the kind of education that would attract an eligible husband. More radical women writers were convinced that female education should not differ greatly from male education.
On both sides, in fiction and in non-fiction, through prose and in verse, the Female Academy was imagined and reimagined throughout the century.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born on August 5, 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, a clergyman and rector, suffered from depression and bouts of alcoholism and violence. Read more
Although she married in September 1879, at the age of 34, Elizabeth Thomasina Meade unusually retained her maiden name not only for the purposes of publishing some 280 novels, but in all areas of her public life. Read More
Princess Ida is based on Tennyson's narrative poem of 1847, The Princess. Gilbert retained Tennyson's blank verse style and basic story line about a heroic princess who runs a women's college and the prince who loves her. Read More
