From the salon to the schoolroom : educating bourgeois girls in nineteenth-century France

How a nation educates its children tells us much about the values of its people. From the Salon to the Schoolroom examines the emerging secondary school system for girls in nineteenth-century France and uncovers how that system contributed to the fashioning of the French bourgeois woman. Rebecca Rogers explores the variety of schools--religious and lay--that existed for girls and paints portraits of the women who ran them and the girls who attended them. Drawing upon a wide array of public and private sources--school programs, prescriptive literature, inspection reports, diaries, and letters--she reveals the complexity of the female educational experience as the schoolroom gradually replaced the salon as the site of French women's special source of influence. From the Salon to the Schoolroom also shows how France as part of its civilizing mission transplanted its educational vision to other settings: the colonies in Africa as well as throughout the Western world, including England and the United States. Historians are aware of the widespread ramifications of Jesuit education, but Rogers shows how French education for girls played into the cross-cultural interactions of modern society, producing an image of the Frenchwoman that continues to tantalize and fascinate the Western world today. Contents......Page 8 List of Abbreviations......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction......Page 18 Part I. Reconstructing Girls’ Education in the Postrevolutionary Period (1800–1830)......Page 32 1 Defining Bourgeois Femininity:Voices and Debates......Page 36 2 Schools, Schooling, and the Educational Experience......Page 62 Part II. Women, Schools, and the Politics of Culture (1830–1880)......Page 94 3 Debating Women’s Place in the Consolidating Bourgeois Order (1830–1848)......Page 100 4 Independent Women? Teachers and the Teaching Profession at Midcentury......Page 126 5 Vocations and Professions: The Case of the Teaching Nun......Page 152 6 Boarding Schools: Location, Ethos, and Female Identities......Page 178 Part III. National and Political Visions of Girls’ Education......Page 214 7 Political Battles for Women’s Minds in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century......Page 218 8 Beyond the Hexagon: French Schools on Foreign Soils......Page 244 Conclusion......Page 270 Appendix 1: The Women Pedagogues......Page 276 Appendix 2: The Professions of Fathers and Husbands of Parisian Headmistresses (1810–1880)......Page 277 Notes......Page 280 Select Bibliography......Page 324 Index......Page 342 Examines the secondary school system for girls in nineteenth-century France and uncovers how that system contributed to the fashioning of the French bourgeois woman. This book reveals the complexity of the female educational experience as the schoolroom gradually replaced the salon as the site of French women's special source of influence. Rebecca Rogers. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 307-324) And Index.