Transforming Women's Education

Liberal Arts and Music in Female Seminaries

Jewel A. Smith

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780252084003
  9780252042249
• eBook ISBN:
  9780252051074
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Female seminaries in nineteenth-century America offered middle-class women the rare privilege of training in music and the liberal arts. A music background in particular provided the foundation for a teaching career, one of the few paths open to women. Jewel A. Smith opens the doors of four female seminaries, revealing a milieu where rigorous training focused on music as an artistic pursuit rather than a social skill. Drawing on previously untapped archives, Smith charts women's musical experiences and training as well as the curricula and instruction available to them, the repertoire they mastered, and the philosophies undergirding their education. She also examines the complex tensions between the ideals of a young democracy and a deeply gendered system of education and professional advancement. An in-depth study of female seminaries as major institutions of learning, Transforming Women's Education illuminates how musical training added to women's lives and how their artistic acumen contributed to American society.

1

Philosophies of Women’s Education in the United States

When the British colonists came to America, they brought traditions from the old country, including their views on women’s roles and their education. Colonial women lived under British law and social conventions such as “coverture,” which included a male-dominated family where women were subservient to their husbands. Colonists assumed subordination of women to be a natural way of life endorsed by tradition and religion. Although women found their lives circumscribed by this restrictive culture, from the time of their arrival in the New World their circumstances contained seeds of societal change.1

The unstable economic status of the American colonies required all members of a family to work in order to ensure its survival.2 The prevailing opinion was that the home, woman’s sphere, included not only raising a “quiver full” of children to populate the vast wilderness but also fulfilling numerous other domestic duties—a requirement if the colonists were to endure the hardships of their new environment. Colonial women earned respect for their strength and ability to participate in the rigorous new lifestyle.3

Most women were minimally educated. Teaching her children became an integral part of a mother’s responsibility in preparation for their future stations in life. The home served as a training ground where daughters were taught necessary domestic skills for homemaking. Based on these conditions and requirements, colonists argued that women needed little book knowledge, since they would not be engaged in work outside the home.4 Though colonists perceived women as being less intelligent than men, New England laws required parents to teach their daughters to read. In 1647 the Massachusetts Bay Colony and in 1650 its sister colony, Connecticut, passed laws commanding towns of fifty families or more to provide elementary schools and towns of one hundred families to establish Latin grammar schools—both restricted to educating young men. Young women were rarely permitted to attend elementary schools until after the Revolutionary War.5

Religious leaders deemed Bible reading an important means of attaining piety and considered it essential for both women and men. Thus the mandates of ministers and Yankee commerce hastened the growth of literacy.6 “Dame schools” for boys and girls, part of the British culture that colonists brought with them, became necessary, because some parents were either too busy or were themselves illiterate and unable to teach their children. Many of these private schools were conducted in the teacher’s home; for example, an older woman might take responsibility for teaching children in her kitchen. This meager education consisted of reading, sometimes writing, rarely arithmetic, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and portions of the Westminster Catechism, and proper etiquette.7 Though girls could attend dame schools, their main purpose was to offer basic education to young boys in preparation for the town schools.8

Postcolonial Progression

Around the turn of the eighteenth century, occupations considered suitable for women broadened to include managing dry goods shops, keeping taverns, making furniture, and printing and publishing.9 The wave of revivals known as the Great Awakening, which began to sweep the colonies in the 1730s and 1740s through the inspiration of English minister George Whitefield, challenged “religious authority and church hierarchy” and thus fostered a new equality among men and women.10 During much of the eighteenth century, women, accustomed to a submissive lifestyle, accounted for the majority of New England churchgoers. As men became progressively involved in business, trade, and politics, their interest in religion began to wane. This enabled women to use religion as a means of leadership and to obtain more independence than they had previously enjoyed. Shifts from men’s to women’s responsibilities in the home and the church, along with the growth of the population and the economy, aided the development of women’s education in the upper levels of colonial society.11

Enlightenment Philosophers’ Views

Those favoring women’s education found support in the writings of Enlightenment philosophers John Locke, René Descartes, and François Poullain de la Barre. Locke envisioned the child’s mind as a tabula rasa, or blank slate, upon which to write the beliefs and goals of society, thus shaping a child’s character. Locke’s philosophy did not distinguish between male and female; rather, it disputed the current view of women’s intellectual inferiority. French mathematician Descartes supported women’s reasoning ability and advocated a proper education that would erase doubts as to the mental competence of the sexes. After studying human anatomy, ex-Jesuit scientist Poullain de la Barre declared that the brain had no sex and that the only difference between the male and female anatomy was their reproductive organs.12

The battle over women’s intellectual ability, however, raged. Those who upheld women’s mental inferiority gained validation from such philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued that the reproductive organs controlled every part of the human being. Thus, he alleged that along with every other part of the body, the brain was also sexed. Rousseau’s supporters expanded the concept of sexual differences and contended that equality for women existed solely through achievements appropriate for their sex.13

Standards for refinement, upheld by elite society, continued to supersede the anticipation of progress in women’s learning during the Enlightenment. Wealthy Americans agreed that their daughters should have the same opportunity for education as their sons only if they proceeded to become ladies in the European sense as their brothers could become gentlemen.14 Apprehension ultimately persisted concerning the effect education might have on young women, making them discontented to live as submissive wives.15

Mid- to Late Eighteenth Century

By the 1740s schools known as “adventure” or “venture” schools, operating as “select” schools, became popular. They received this title simply because their proprietors saw education as a business venture, offering instruction for daughters of elite families.16 Another type of school, known as the “private day” or “boarding” school, was also established, mainly for girls of the upper class. Influenced by the philosophy of women’s education in England, these schools used instruction methods comparable to those of notable British boarding schools, emphasizing the feminine accomplishments of French, music, dancing, drawing, and needlework. From 1750 to 1860 these day and boarding schools, which became known as female seminaries and academies, flourished as the primary type of women’s educational institution. Although a few schools established in the early to mid-eighteenth century, such as the Ursuline Convent for women in New Orleans (1727) or the Moravian Young Ladies’ Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1742), provided a solid academic education, many of the seminaries offered only a smattering of basic instruction along with showy accomplishments.17

Reactions to women’s education varied. Affluent parents became less concerned about their daughters’ receiving an academic education, preferring training that would prepare them for marriage. Men who had begun to acquire some wealth and to imitate the lifestyle of upper-class Europeans wanted their daughters to be taught such subjects as the social graces, music, and French. Consequently, many parents welcomed the proliferation of seminaries and academies that specialized in the ornamental arts.18 These institutions became known as “finishing” or “fashionable” schools. Some parents, however, recognized the need for their daughters to be educated in order to be self-supporting should they remain single. With a surplus of women in some communities, it was likely that not all of them would marry.19

Given the thriving American economy at the end of the eighteenth century, men could be selective in their choice of wives. They found a woman particularly attractive if she could bring a large dowry to the marriage and sufficient skills to complement her husband in society. Limited employment choices made it difficult for single women to be self-supporting. Thus, those from the upper class found it essential to attract a well-to-do husband. In order to do so, women of means devoted their attention to becoming ladies of fashion like their counterparts in England. Once this trend began with the elite, it was difficult to reverse.20 A common opinion among conservative minds held that “a woman needed to know only ‘chemistry enough to keep the pot boiling, and geography enough to know the location of the different rooms in her house.’”21 Despite prominent writers who defended women’s intellectual abilities, opposing views of women’s education remained strong.

Common schools for both boys and girls opened in 1770. In larger cities, school sessions lasted six months, while those in the smaller towns ran for two to four months. These schools provided a minimal education: spelling, reading, writing, and “rarely even the first rules of arithmetic.”22 As late as 1783, girls in the common schools still had limited prospects for education: “Females over ten years of age, in populous towns, were sometimes, though rarely, placed in the common schools, and taught to write a good hand, compose a little, cipher, and know something of history.”23 This appeared to represent significant progress in the development of women’s education. In many instances, though, women had to wait until the revolutionary period to acquire instruction in anything beyond the basic academic subjects and the “fine arts.”24

The American Revolution

With the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, women’s responsibilities and domains increased, and women became accepted in both the private and the public spheres. They performed the duties of men on farms and in shops and served in the capacities of patriots or loyalists, “disguised as soldiers, spies, and camp followers.”25 Nevertheless, some male patriots had no intention of advancing women’s rights or their education. Along with less educated Americans, they feared the results if a woman should receive an academic education and argued that if women learned to write, they might forge their husbands’ signatures. Rather than increase their intellectual capabilities, men wanted their daughters to become noteworthy housewives who upheld the colonial traditions of “piety, modesty, frugality, and fertility.”26

Girls in some locations were able to attend school from 5:00 to 7:00 A.M. or 6:00 to 8:00 P.M.. In some areas schools were also open to them for a few weeks in the summer, when their male counterparts worked on the farms or at dockyards. Considering the earlier restrictions on women’s education, this was a major step forward and would have been momentous had more teachers been available. Frequently, however, young women tried to learn what they could without any help.27 Such was the impoverished state of education for women at the time of the revolution; 90 percent of the white men in New England could write, but fewer than half of the white women were able to do so.28

As a result of the American Revolution, the concept of equality was embedded in the Constitution. The proposition that “all men are created equal” became the political promise of society. Eventually women questioned if all men are created equal, why women should be excluded.29 Not only did the Declaration of Independence fail to provide women with the same egalitarianism as their male counterparts, but also further divisions arose in women’s education—class began to establish the boundaries. While girls from the upper class received training in the ornamental arts, those from lower economic strata continued to consider themselves fortunate if they learned to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. Women from the upper class no longer received admiration and respect for their strength and domestic capabilities as did women of earlier generations; rather, these duties were relegated to the middle an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Philosophies of Women’s Education in the United States
• 2 Beyond an Accomplishment: A Philosophy of Music Education
• 3 The Dawn of a New Era in Women’s Education
• 4 Seminary Structure: A Comparison
• 5 Curricula: Academic and Ornamental
• 6 Music Education for a Young Lady
• 7 Instrumental Music at the Seminaries
• 8 Singing Ladies: Vocal Repertoire at the Seminaries
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index