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This essay analyzes two French seventeenth-century theorists of women's education, Jacques Du Bosc and François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon, in an attempt to map out the complex development of societal attitudes towards women, and thus of what women's education would consist. The querelle des femmes is a convenient rubric that incorporates all aspects of the debate concerning the status, ability, and value of women in early modern Europe. Du Bosc was a participant in the querelle des femmes. Fénelon, though not directly concerned with the debate, dealt with the subject, and his views can be seen as an extension of the debate. The issues each writer addressed--and ultimately, their view of the place of women in seventeenth-century French society--further readers' understanding of the life of women in the period. The differences in their work, which spans fifty years, can be read as indicators of shifting opinion regarding women among a particular audience. Both Du Bosc and Fénelon wrote on women's education for the leisured, educated classes: the aristocracy and the haute bourgeoisie. Du Bosc was essentially concerned with women's interior life, not with reshaping women's place in society.

This essay reveals the paradoxical attitude of the Jewish community toward women's education in early modern Italy. Throughout the early modern period, the ambivalent attitude of Jews towards the education of Jewish girls in Italy was based on the seemingly unresolvable tension between the necessity of literacy to run a Jewish home and the sexual dangers of advanced learning. Despite the ambivalent attitude towards the teaching of Jewish girls in Italy, some did receive instruction, though exactly what was taught, by whom, and to whom varied. Available documents indicate a range of educational opportunities and attainments. In Italy some women reached very high levels of educational attainments. Women who attained a certain level of learning earned the title rabit or rabanit a title of distinction found in classical rabbinic literature for a woman who participated in rabbinic discussions. The existence of many manuscript collections of private Hebrew prayers specifically designed for Jewish women in Italy constitutes evidence of the widespread use of Hebrew in private rituals by women. Jewish women in Italy did write and publish works of their own. Jewish men, therefore, viewed women's literary accomplishments as they viewed women's clothing.

This paper concentrates on the household education of upper-class medieval English women and how this education shaped and socialized women for the integral role that they played in late medieval and early modern English society. It looks at an example of the daughters in one specific family and sees what kinds of education they might have had, how they exhibited their educational interests, and how well their education prepared them for their social roles. In this paper, the author asks for a reappraisal of the relative importance of a domestic education given the significant role of the household in early English society. Although higher education was not an option for aristocratic women, their household education was very much like that of men. Upper-class women were members of literate society whether or not they could participate directly. Like their fathers, brothers, and husbands, they managed estates, read religious and secular literature, participated in courtly pastimes, pursued legal cases, and oversaw the education of their own children as well as the children of other families. The author concludes that in a world where aristocratic households served an important political function, the status of the women who ruled them, and consequently the status of the education of those women, must be elevated.

This essay focuses on the dilemma of midwives' education in early modern Europe. Throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, midwives found themselves on the horns of a dilemma: how best could they educate themselves in order to be able to continue to compete within the shifting professional landscape of early modern health care? By focusing on the education of midwives and placing it in sharp relief against the larger backdrop of the scientific revolution, this paper seeks to reexamine how and why female midwives were systematically supplanted by obstetricians as the primary caregivers overseeing the process of childbirth among urban social elites. The first section provides a synthetic overview of the types of educative enterprises in which midwives were engaged, ranging from the creation of specialized institutions for instruction to much less formal apprenticeship programs. Much of this overview is drawn from the wealth of recent scholarship on early modern midwifery. The paper then proceeds to an analysis of selected tracts written by midwives in an effort to determine the extent to which these women were themselves conscious of, and responsive to, perceived social and cultural shifts that threatened their role within the birthing process.

This essay investigates incidences of deaths at boarding schools in early modern Europe. This essay sets the beginning point for further investigation by bringing together fragments of perception and experience that have come to light from various locations in eighteenth-century Europe. It first samples eighteenth-century perceptions of health and death at the boarding school, in order to gauge the extent to which contemporaries were cognizant of schoolgirl mortality. It then examines some actual occurrences at school of death, its frequent visitor, in order to identify some patterns of school mortality. It concludes by speculating on the implications of uncovering this phenomenon for a fuller understanding of early modern education. One distinctive feature of the early modern educational revolution in Europe was the prominence of boarding schools. As schools proliferated in the eighteenth century, some of the commentaries debating the relative advantages of education at home or in school included reflections on students' health. Yet death was a fact of life in early modern boarding schools. But while it lasted, the unhealthfulness of boarding schools must have had an impact on the experiences of pupils, parents, and family life.

This essay challenges the notion that society spoke with one voice when it decreed that women should be chaste, silent and obedient. In this essay on Elizabethan books of rhetoric, the author discovers that a multiple response existed, a confused or mixed message on women's place in rhetoric--not all eloquent women were silent, or encouraged to be. The author will first establish that Renaissance eloquence was seen as a source of power for male rhetoricians; second, show how woman's speech had to be disenfranchised within male rhetorical discourse for the dual purpose of making language masculine, and depriving woman of this masculine rhetorical power; and third, reevaluate the Renaissance books of instruction for women in order to reveal the latent or potential power they offer women by their endorsement of a range of available verbal behaviors. These three objectives come together through a common link: the key to achieving power through speech is education. The author concludes that although the title of Suzanne Hull's ground-breaking book-- Chaste, Silent and Obedient--accurately describes the patriarchal ideal of woman, it is wrong to see this as the only attitude circulating during the Renaissance.

This essay concentrates on early modern images of the cloth working woman, with particular reference to books of needlepoint and lace-making designs, and to the image of Penelope, the weaving woman par excellence, as she appears in Robert Greene's Penelopes Web of 1587. The images of women working at looms or bent over a needlework frame were didactic images, employed to illustrate an ideal of womanhood. Clothworking provided a sort of litmus test of femininity and virtue: a weaving woman was seen as domestic, silent, submissive and chaste--and hence feminine. Pattern books sought not only to educate women in a domestic craft, but also to craft them into the cultural image of the ideal woman. The strong but subtle influence of society in acculturating women is highlighted in the author's analysis of early modern pattern books of needlepoint and lace making. The author argues that the pattern books had a dual purpose. These books, while ostensibly providing needlework patterns, also contained an underlying lesson; they taught women how to behave. Through the pattern books, society's expectations of proper behavior for women were inculcated in the needleworker. More than merely teaching needlework patterns, the author contends, the books socialized women.

This essay examines how gender shaped vernacular education in fifteenth-century Florence, Italy. In this essay, the author directly links societal expectations to women's education in Renaissance Florence. She makes it clear that in a society where women were expected neither to have a civic role nor to participate actively in commerce, what constituted an educated woman was the woman who had learned the virtues more than the woman who had learned to write. Her analysis of a previously unknown convent school in Florence brings new evidence to the discussion of the relationship between female education and female culture. The first part of the essay locates the convent school of Lapo in the broader structures of Florentine schooling, then moves on to sketch the social profile of schoolgirls who attended it. The second part of the essay attempts to capture aspects of the learning experience for both nuns and their secular charges by looking at the nature of the curriculum and the purposes of convent education. The third and final part of the essay turns from reading to writing skills, and examines how girls graphic training was directed and often impeded by powerful contradictions within Florentine culture.

This section introduces the essays published in this book. The goal of this book is not to dismiss the importance of formal education for women but instead to present it as one of many types of women's education found in the early modern world. In her opening essay, Sharon Strocchia directly links societal expectations to women's education in Renaissance Florence. Her analysis of a previously unknown convent school in Florence, Italy, brings new evidence to the discussion of the relationship between female education and female culture. Sharon Michalove furthers the discussion in her examination of the aristocratic household. She asks for a reappraisal of the relative importance of a domestic education given the significant role of the household in early English society. Catherine Eskin challenges the notion that society spoke with one voice when it decreed that women should be chaste, silent and obedient. Howard Adelman continues with the theme of society's ambivalent views of the educated woman. The last essay in this volume looks at an important area of women's vocational education, midwifery. Adrianna Bakos correlates the decline of midwifery with new attitudes towards knowledge that resulted from the overwhelming impact of the scientific revolution.

This section states the goal of this History of Education series and explains the criteria used by the editor in selecting the manuscripts included in the series. Garland's Studies in the History of Education series includes not only volumes on the history of U.S. and Western education, but also on the history of the development of education in non-Western societies. A major goal of this series is to provide new interpretations of educational history that are based on the best recent scholarship; each volume will provide an original analysis and interpretation of the topic under consideration. A wide variety of methodological approaches from the traditional to the innovative are used. In addition, this series especially welcomes studies that focus not only on schools but also on education as defined by Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn: the transmission of culture across generations. The major criteria for inclusion are first, a manuscript of the highest quality, and second, a topic of importance to understanding the field. The editor is open to readers' suggestions and looks forward to a long-term dialogue with them on the future direction of the series.