Childhood and Education in Jane Austen's Era

Childhood and Education in Jane Austen's Era

Adam McCune

I. Childhood

II. Education

Nature

Nurture

Marianne

Elinor

Nature

Nurture

“We... had all the masters that were necessary.”

“Your mother must have been quite a slave to your education.”

tutors

university

Nature is Better

Nurture is Better

1712–1778

1632–1704

Boys

nursery

military

school

Girls

nursery

governess/tutors

John Locke

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1712–1778

1632–1704

tabula rasa

plant

Knowledge

William Wordsworth

1770–1850

"trailing clouds of glory"

Romantics

original

innocence

Puritans

Virtue

original sin

Blake, "Little Boy Found"

New England Primer

Hannah More

1745–1833

Lady Middleton's children

Fanny Price

and her cousins

French

history

geography

mythology

metals

semi-metals

planets

philosophers

Harry Dashwood

Other common subjects

Accomplishments

music

drawing

dance

needlework

modern languages

history

arithmetic

geography

grammar

natural sciences

(esp. botany)

Available to those with resources

Latin and Greek

mathematics

Fanny Price

Illustrations to Austen's novels

Brock, C. E. "Why was he to ruin himself and their poor little Harry?" Molland's. Web. June 2014. <http://www.mollands.net/etexts/senseandsensibility/snsillus.html>.

-----. "With what indignation such a Letter as this must be read by Miss Dashwood..." Molland's. Web. June 2014. <http://www.mollands.net/etexts/senseandsensibility/snsillus.html>.

-----. "You write uncommonly fast." 1895. Molland's. Web. June 2014. <http://www.mollands.net/etexts/prideandprejudice/pnpillus.html>.

Brock, H. M. " 'In vain were the well-meant condescensions of Sir Thomas' Chap. II." Molland's. Web. June 2014. <http://www.mollands.net/etexts/mansfieldpark/mpillus.html>.

Hammond, Christiana. "Miss Bennet, do you know who I am?" 1900. National Library of Scotland. Web. June 2014. <http://www.nls.uk/exhibitions/treasures/pride-and-prejudice/victorian-illustration>.

Thomson, Hugh. "Mischievous tricks." Austenonly. Web. June 2014. <http://austenonly.com/2011/03/31/hugh-thomsons-illustrations-for-sense-and-sensibility-part-four/>.

Film stills

François, Emilie, and Gemma Jones, perf. Sense and Sensibility. Dir. Ang Lee. Columbia Pictures Corporation and Mirage Production, 1995. Film.

Additional images

Blake, William. "The Little Boy Found." Songs of Innocence and of Experience, copy AA. 1826. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England. William Blake Archive. Web. June 2014. <http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=songsie.aa.illbk.14&java=no>.

De La Tour, Maurice Quentin. Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 18th century. Musée Antoine Lécuyer, Saint-Quentin, France. Wikimedia Commons. Web. June 2014. <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Jacques_Rousseau_(painted_portrait).jpg>.

Haydon, Benjamin Robert. William Wordsworth. 1842. National Portrait Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons. Web. June 2014. <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Wordsworth_001.jpg>.

"In Adam's Fall We sinned all." The New England Primer. Occidental College Center for Digital Learning & Research. Web. June 2014. <http://cdlrsandbox.org/neprimer/versiononepages/page8.html>.

Kneller, Godfrey. Portrait of John Locke. 1697. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Wikimedia Commons. Web. June 2014. <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JohnLocke.png>.

LilKar. "New life." RedOrbit. Web. June 2014. <http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112833085/plant-aerosols-are-air-conditioners-042913/>.

"Marilyn Butler | Jane Austen and the War of Ideas [cover]." 1988. Amazon. Web. June 2014. <http://www.amazon.com/Jane-Austen-Ideas-Marilyn-Butler/dp/0198129688>.

More, Hannah. "The White Slave Trade." Google Books. Web. June 2014. <http://books.google.com/books?id=-80UAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA385>.

Pickersgill, Henry William. Hannah More. 1822. National Portrait Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons. Web. June 2014. <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HannahMore.jpg>.

Romney, George. Caroline, Viscountess Clifton, and Lady Elizabeth Spencer. 1794. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California. Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art. By Ann Bermingham. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000. Print.

Smith, Sydney. "Too Much Latin and Greek." Google Books. Web. June 2014. <http://books.google.com/books?id=VvYNAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA345>.

"Tabula Rasa." Wolverton Mountain. E. Allen Campbell. Web. June 2014. <http://www.wolverton-mountain.com/articles/tabula_rasa.html>.

Austen Reference Works

McMaster, Juliet. “Jane Austen’s Children.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal On-Line 31.1 (Winter 2010). Jane Austen Society of North America. <www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol31no1/mcmaster.html>.

Moody, Ellen. “A Calendar for Sense and Sensibility.” Philological Quarterly 78.3 (Summer 1999): 301-334. Also reproduced online: <www.jimandellen.org/austen/s&s.calendar.html>.

Selwyn, David. Jane Austen and Children. London: Continuum, 2010.

History of Ideas About Childhood

Boas, George. The Cult of Childhood. London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1966.

Gubar, Marah. Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children’s Literature. Oxford UP, 2009.

Pifer, Ellen. Demon or Doll: Images of the Child in Contemporary Writing and Culture. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2000.

Postman, Neil. The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Vintage, 1982.

Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan, or, The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction. U of Pennsylvania P, 1993.

Austen-Era Writers on Education

More, Hannah. Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education. London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1799.

——. “The White Slave Trade.” [1804.] The Works of Hannah More. Vol. 3. London: T. Cadell, 1830. 385-396.

Smith, Sydney. “Professional Education / Too Much Latin and Greek” (1809), “Female Education” (1810), and “Public Schools” (1810). The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith. New York: Edgar G. Taylor, 1846. 50-61.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 3rd ed. London: J. Johnson, 1796.

18th and 19th Century Education

Allen, David. The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976.

Barbour, Judith. “Female Education.” An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832. Ed. Iain McCalman, Jon Mee, Gillian Russell, Clara Tuite, Kate Fullagar, and Patsy Hardy. Oxford UP, 1999.

Barnard, H. C. A History of English Education From 1760. London: U of London P, 1961.

Bermingham, Ann. Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000.

De Ballaigue, Christina. Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France, 1800-1867. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.

English, Barbara. “The Education of the Landed Elite in England c. 1815-c. 1870.” Journal of Educational Administration and History 23.1 (1991): 15-32.

Lewis, Judith S. “Princess of Parallelograms and Her Daughter: Math and Gender in the Nineteenth Century English Aristocracy.” Women’s Studies International Forum 18.4 (1995): 387-394.