Lauren Kell

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Harvey, David

Keywords

Education, Conduct, Literature, Novels

Area of Concentration

History

Abstract

Female education in late eighteenth-century Britain took a number of different forms that contributed to the creation of an ideal feminine form. In this thesis two of these forms, conduct books and novels, are examined with the purpose of determining the nature of education for elite and genteel young women, as well as the fears and anxieties that underpinned this education. Each genre provides different opportunities for educators to determine the best method to instruct young women and expanded the range of topics that could be explored. Conduct books by both men and women from various religious, political, and generational backgrounds are examined in an attempt to determine common themes and anxieties across a broad spectrum of ideologies, while fictions examined are exclusively female-authored. Conduct books provide theoretical behavior and ideologies for women to follow, while novels show that behavior in practice and provide some possible consequences of either following or ignoring the advice that conduct books provide. Neither genre is either fully "historical" or fully "literary;" each genre has elements of both that when examined together allow for a more nuanced vision of what young women were expected to know and how they were expected to behave.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida Libraries, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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