Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, Martin Luther University (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Women in 18th and 19th Century Britain, language: English, abstract: Let your children be brought up together; let their sports and studies be the same; let them enjoy, in the constant presence of those who are set over them, all that freedom which innocence renders harmless, and in which Nature rejoices. (MACAULAY 1790: 32) Eighteenth Century England was a time in which women had little to say in society. They did not have the right to vote, they were not allowed to own properties, when married and as the husband was the chief breadwinner, they were not supposed to work. As they could not leave the house alone without being considered a prostitute, they were confined to the home where they would have to take care of the children and the household, "a subordinate role [...] in society" (AUGUSTIN 2005: 2). As a consequence, as girls did not need to go to school to learn their future tasks as housewives, they were educated at home by their mothers who acted as a role model. The entire eighteenth and well into the nineteenth century there was little change in how girls and women were educated. The old system of patriarchy was still well established but it began to crumble little by little. Women began to fight for their rights getting more and more supporters. This work is trying to shed light on this period's progression from girls being educated poorly to girls having the same education as their brothers. The fist chapter is going to show how gender differences were tried to be justified from a psyco-medical point of view, transferring the scientific findings to women's roles in society. The second chapter will show how important women were beginning to challenge the old system, disproving the validity of the scientific findings. Here a subdivision between the

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Schooling and Social Change in England since 1760 offers a powerful critique of the situation of British education today and shows the historical processes that have helped generate the crisis confronting policymakers and practitioners at the present time. The book identifies the key phases of economic and social change since 1760 and shows how the education system has played a central role in embedding, sustaining and deepening social distinctions in Britain. Covering the whole period since the first industrialization, it gives a detailed account of the development of a deeply divided education system that leads to quite separate lifestyles for those from differing backgrounds. The book develops arguments of inequalities through a much-needed account of the changes in education. This book will be of great interest for academics, scholars and post-graduate students in the field of history of education and education politics. It will also appeal to administrators, teachers and policy makers, especially those interested in the historical development of schooling.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are the gateway between the medieval world and the modern, centuries when the western societies moved from an age governed principally by religion and superstition to an age directed principally by reason and understanding. Although the worlds of science and philosophy took giant strides away from the medieval view of the world, attitudes to women did not change from those that had pertained for centuries. Girls were largely barred from education - only around 14% of women could read and write by 1700 - and the few educated women were not permitted to enter the professions. As a result women, especially if single, were employed in menial jobs or were forced into a life of petty crime. Many survived by entering the 'oldest profession in the world'. The social turbulence of the first half of the seventeenth century afforded women new opportunities and new religious freedoms and women were attracted into the many new sects where they were afforded a voice in preaching and teaching. In a time of unprecedented and unbridled political discussion, many better educated women saw no reason why they should not enter the debate and began to voice their opinions alongside those of men, publishing their own books and pamphlets. These new and unprecedented liberties thus gained by women were perceived as a threat by the leaders of society, and thus arose an unlikely masculine alliance against the new feminine assertions, across all sections of society from Puritan preachers to court judges, from husbands to court rakes. This reaction often found expression in the violent and brutal treatment of women who were seen to have stepped out of line, whether legally, socially or domestically. Often beaten and abused at home by husbands exercising their legal right, they were whipped, branded, exiled and burnt alive by the courts, from which their sex had no recourse to protection, justice or restitution. Many of the most brutal forms of punishment were reserved exclusively for women, and even where the same, they were more savagely applied than would be the case for similar crimes committed by men. This work records the many kinds of violent physical and verbal abuse perpetrated against women in Britain and her colonies, both domestically and under the law, during two centuries when huge strides in human knowledge and civilisation were being made in every other sphere of human activity, but social and legal attitudes to women and their punishment remained firmly embedded in the medieval.

The late Victorian period brought a radical change in cultural attitudes toward middle-class women and work. Anxiety over the growing disproportion between women and men in the population, combined with an awakening desire among young women for personal and financial freedom, led progressive thinkers to advocate for increased employment opportunities. The major stumbling block was the persistent conviction that middle-class women - "ladies" - could not work without relinquishing their social status. Through media reports, public lectures, and fictional portrayals of working women, From Spinster to Career Woman traces advocates' efforts to alter cultural perceptions of women, work, class, and the ideals of womanhood. Focusing on the archetypal figures of the hospital nurse and the typewriter, Arlene Young analyzes the strategies used to transform a job perceived as menial into a respected profession and to represent office work as progressive employment for educated women. This book goes beyond a standard examination of historical, social, and political realities, delving into the intense human elements of a cultural shift and the hopes and fears of young women seeking independence. Providing new insights into the Victorian period, From Spinster to Career Woman captures the voices of ordinary women caught up in the frustrations and excitements of a new era.

The collection's focus is on girls' secondary education, and hence the gendered cultural expectations of the middle classes and upper classes, will provide the dominant narrative, given the relatively recent democratization of European educational systems.