Educating Women

Educating the Other

“…82 That year, the capital had fi fteen private girls' schools, only one of which had a Romanian principal; 83 the following year the number dropped to eleven. 84 Such institutions were in the fi rst place commercial ventures, starting as family businesses or associations of friends and colleagues, 85 but tended to be short-lived because of the diffi culty of keeping them running.…”

‘The time of storms’: managing bourgeois girls’ puberty in France, 1800–1870

“…56 Early nineteenth--century doctors and scientists were responding to, as well as reinforcing, existing social and religious arguments about the dangers of removing girls from the home and about female intellectual activity. 57 However, their focus on the impact of school--life on the pubescent female body was new and prompted the proliferation of treatises on physical education for girls from about the 1820s. With titles like Hygiène physiologique de la femme; ou de la femme considérée dans son système physique et moral, sous le rapport de son éducation et des soins que réclame sa santé à toutes les époques de sa vie published by Dr Lachaise in 1825 or Gymnastique appliquée à l 'éducation physique des jeunes filles published by Dr Bienaimé in 1844, a growing number of medical experts were devising systems of physical education for girls which were specifically intended for the management of female puberty at school.…”

“…From the 1810s, prefects in the Seine and other departments were setting up mechanisms for the regulation and inspection of girls schools which included provisions intended to promote hygiene. 69 The health of girls at school was of central concern for the administrative authorities. This reflected in part the growing influence of hygienic theories, but may also have reflected more particular concerns about female puberty.…”

“…These elaborate rulings, inherited from the convent schools of the Ancien Régime, set out in great detail the daily regimen of schools and their pupils. 79 Perhaps such regimes represent one way in which schoolmistresses sought to respond to the importance placed on regularity in the medical literature.…”

“…For many French girls, the beginning of school time was marked by the casting off of their own clothes and the assumption of the uniform. 81 Arriving at Saint Denis in tine 1820s, Marie Capelle vividly remembered having to give up her pretty light dresses of the day before and take on the lugubrious black uniform of school. Juliette Adam, on going to school in Picardy in 1839 was similarly affected by the symbolic assumption of the school's uniform when told to put on the 'terrible black apron'.…”