The Evolving Views on Women’s Education in Eighteenth-Century British Literature
Open Access
Author:
Dougherty, Megan
Area of Honors:
English
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Carla J. Mulford, Thesis Supervisor Claire Mary Colebrook, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Women's education Eighteenth Century British Literature Fiction Nonfiction Mary Wollstonecraft Samuel Richardson Ann Radcliffe
Abstract:
Early eighteenth-century Britain offered limited opportunities for education and civic engagement for women, regarding the academic and political spheres as belonging to men. As the century progressed, however, opinions about women’s education and social standing evolved. When women authors began to gain popularity, they also gained control over the literary narrative surrounding women and presented the British public with a much more capable portrayal of women. I consider three works in this project: Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The three written works serve as a chronological exploration of societal perspectives, discussing women's equal rights to education and civic participation from a period when it was unfathomable to when it was beginning to be realized. With Richardson’s novel serving as a baseline for the early eighteenth-century views of women and Radcliffe and Wollstonecraft’s works as examples of the efforts to shift those views, I analyze Britain’s transforming attitudes about women’s role and education.
