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Women's Colleges and Domesticity, 1875–1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Roberta Wein
Roberta Wein*
Affiliation:
The Division of Historical and Philosophical Foundations, School of Education, New York University
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Extract

THE FEMALE COLLEGE was a new phenomenon which developed after the Civil War. Those who planned these infant colleges were aware of their institutional antecedents—academies and seminaries which generally steeped females in the domestic arts along with cultural and moral refinements. In antebellum America, female education and domesticity were inexorably related as educators sought to insure the endurance of the domestic occupation for women by elevating it from drudgery to a noble profession. The pious homemaker would uplift American civilization by providing order, stability, and self-restraint in an otherwise chaotic society. After the Civil War, however, molders of female colleges struggled with these traditions as they tried to determine whether such colleges would continue to protect domestic values from decay or whether higher education for women would represent a break from the perpetuation in educational institutions of feminine passivity and dependence.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Spring 1974 , pp. 31 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by New York University 

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References

Notes

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6. Eliot, Charles W., with whom Thomas, M. Carey argued publicly, expressed this point of view consistently. See, for example, his essays entitled “The Higher Education for Women” and “The Normal American Woman” in Charles W. Eliot's Talks to Parents and Young People edited by Cotton, Edward H. (Boston, 1928).Google Scholar

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36. All of these figures were compiled from alumnae registers which list information for each graduate. A 20 per cent random sample was used, from which the percentages presented were calculated.Google Scholar