Pride and Prejudice: Women and Social class in the Regency Era
Women were not considered to be equal to men. Women were regarded as being more fragile, mentally and physically, than men, and in need of care and protection. Wives were expected to defer to their husbands. Women laboured under certain legal disadvantages. When a woman married, for instance, any property she owned or any moeny she earned or ineherited automatically belonged to her husband. A husband could divorce his wife for adultery (though even for a man,divorce was difficult to come by, and carried a strong social stigma) but a woman could not divorce her husband even if he was cruel, deserted her etc. It ws possible to obtain a legal seperation, but that ws very difficult to come by.
For upper or middle class women who needed to earn a living, teaching was one of the very few respectable options, and to be a teacher was not regarded as a particularly desirable occupation. A woman who became a teacher might be a governess (teaching the children of one family in their own home) or she might be a teacher in a school. Universities did not admit women at this time, and there were no female university professors, nor could women be doctors or lawyers or go into the church.
The standard of education in girls' schools was very variable, most concentrated mainly on fashionable accomplishments like dancing, music, French, and drawing, but some had more demanding curriculums. Mary Russell Mitford (who was a few years younger than Jane Austen) went to a school that taught Latin and Astronomy as well as the more usual subjects. And there were books aimed at girls which offered more challenging subjects. for instance, an immensely popular book in the Regency era was 'Conversations in Chemistry' by jane marcet, which taught chemistry in the form of conversations between a governes.s and her two pupils. This book was extremely popular and went through many editions. It was intended mainly for girls, but was read by men as well, the scientist Michael Faraday said that
For upper or middle class women who needed to earn a living, teaching was one of the very few respectable options, and to be a teacher was not regarded as a particularly desirable occupation. A woman who became a teacher might be a governess (teaching the children of one family in their own home) or she might be a teacher in a school. Universities did not admit women at this time, and there were no female university professors, nor could women be doctors or lawyers or go into the church.
The standard of education in girls' schools was very variable, most concentrated mainly on fashionable accomplishments like dancing, music, French, and drawing, but some had more demanding curriculums. Mary Russell Mitford (who was a few years younger than Jane Austen) went to a school that taught Latin and Astronomy as well as the more usual subjects. And there were books aimed at girls which offered more challenging subjects. for instance, an immensely popular book in the Regency era was 'Conversations in Chemistry' by jane marcet, which taught chemistry in the form of conversations between a governes.s and her two pupils. This book was extremely popular and went through many editions. It was intended mainly for girls, but was read by men as well, the scientist Michael Faraday said that