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Class Distinctions Among Women |
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To only look into gender as the all-encompassing factor of oppression of women in the Early Modern period, would be entirely too simplistic and render an incorrect picture of how education, or lack thereof, affected women�s lives. There is an element of intersectionality of class elitism and sexism that worked together to establish a social hierarchy within the female populace of England in particular to this site, and all of Europe in the bigger picture. Nigel Wheale gives a good parallel example in his book Writing and Society: �The gulf between sexuality/gender as represented by the media in our own day and anyone�s actual life is perhaps not too far away from the mismatch in early modern society between idealized images of conduct and daily experience.�1 The media�s image of everyone as perfectly fit (or for women emaciated), middle class, white and heterosexual could not be further from the reality we live in. Therefore, the gendered assumptions and any huge generalizations made or broad topic names, such as English women and education, need to be more specifically examined through a paradigm that is sensitive to the issue of class. In the reality of the Early Modern period �those who could pay for an education or whose social, cultural and economic life required them to learn were literate.�2 |
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#6 |
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A man of a more privileged class and/or in a position that held cultural expectations about his occupation had better chances of gaining access to literacy. Since socially, culturally and economically women were not expected to theoretically exist in a position where literacy would be needed, it became an extremely privileged aspect of the gentry and aristocracy. These upper class women had the time, money and access for learning within their homes. The middling sorts while not possessing as much flexibility in regards to their daughters educations still had options that working class women did not. As for the lower bracket of women, learning took place �at petty school, also called ABC or dame school.�3 The problem for the population of people below the gentry was that �fees prohibited entry for the majority� of them and girls were almost always pulled out as soon as possible, for economic reasons, along with the gendered assumptions that fueled lower expectations. This is a perfect example of how and when the intersectional aspect of class and sex dictated women�s lives and kept them from excelling or at least attempting some form of advancement.
An example of class distinction within education is a schoolmistresses� description of her classroom and how she ordered it to �take care not to place children of the better sort next to the poorest and dirtiest pupils so as not to disgust them.�4 This organization of children sent out clear messages about who would be moving on in education and who was valued among the children. Similar messages were sent to women in regards to what they were taught, primarily religious subjects and domestic duties as well as what they intrinsically learned through socialization as a female.
One similarity that permeated all classes in the Early Modern period and to English women in particular, was that �no woman proceeded to the early modern equivalents of higher education in the English universities at Oxford and Cambridge or the �post graduate� Inns of Court in London.�5 In the end, a woman�s education really was unusable in regards to a career or having a life in the public sphere. There are exceptions to this rule but they are a very minute group of women. One such example is an Italian woman named Christine de Pizan, who made a living as a professional (even feminist) writer. Another example is Aphra Behn, who is known as the first English professional writer, who wrote plays, narratives and was even a spy for Charles II in 1667.
Overall however, lower class and even some middling women were denied education, and the majority of the populace was made up of these women. The realistic picture is one in which women�s options, opportunities, demeanors, expectations of themselves (and others)�basically her whole life was dictated by which class she was born into. This is why a more focused discussion of class is beneficial to better understand which women learned at what levels and where their educations were taught, if they were taught at all. |
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Women of the Middling Sort |
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The Working Class Women |
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The Women of the Aristocracy |
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1 Nigel Wheale. Writing And Society. (London and New York: Routledge, 1999). 113.
2 R.A. Houston. Literacy in Early Modern Europe. (Harlow, England: Longman, 2002). 141.
3 Wheale, 47.
4 Natalie Zemon Davis, Arlette Farge. A History of Women in the West. Vol. 3. (London: Belknap Press, 1993). 120.
5 Wheale, 49. |
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