spent seven years at a great school in town’. Moralists criticized the fashion for superficial and showy accomplishments but there was little more solid on offer anywhere. Girls’ boarding schools were not widespread until later in the next century and both the universities were closed to women, as were the professions of medicine, the law, the Church, the army and the navy. Argument raged as to the nature and purpose of female education: many people thought that the only education necessary for girls was moral and religious training, which would help young women to sub-due their unruly passions. Some women internalized this ideology and took it on themselves to advise their own sex, insisting that opportunities to become generals, politicians, legislators or advocates would be wasted on mere females. Women were even discouraged from talking politics in mixed company. Jane Austen was interested in politics and read solid books on history. Nonetheless, women were popularly said to be ruled by their hearts, not their heads. Voices were raised against such prejudice, and some people argued that girls needed to be taught to think. Others pleaded for the teaching of English grammar, pointing out that while the French language was a fashionable subject, most young ladies remained grossly ignorant of their own.
At home, the girls’ education was probably much like that of the Bennet sisters in
Pride and Prejudice
. Elizabeth tells Lady Catherine they were always encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary. When Jane was eleven her father was paying a drawing master. Jane’s family considered her to be talented in that direction, and Cassandra and Henry both drew. Jane wrote in a letter when she was forty that she did not have her niece’s ‘fondness for masters’. Fanny Knight’s music teacher, Mr Meyers, ‘gives his three lessons a week - altering his days and his hours … just as he chooses, never very punctual and never giving good measure.’ Jane herself learned the pianoforte in her teens. Jane was fortunate because the instruments were so expensive they were a rare luxury in country parsonages. When Frank Churchill in
Emma
gives a pianoforte to his secret fiancée Jane Fairfax, the gift is munificent indeed, an amenity the impoverished Mrs Bates and her daughter could never have provided.
If Mr and Mrs Austen could not afford to import many masters, the clever father and brothers filled the gap. James and Henry went to Oxford University, where James edited a periodical called
The Loiterer
.
An elegant hand was considered important for letter-writing. Jane’s own letters are beautifully penned, their neat flowing handwriting sloping elegantly to the right. Only quill pens, which quickly wore down and needed recutting, were available to write with. Steel nibs did not come into general use until the mid-nineteenth century. In the circumstances, neat legible handwriting was important and the ability to write small made for economy in paper and postage. Members of Parliament had the privilege of sending mail for nothing, by signing letters above the address. This was called franking. Everybody else had to pay not when sending letters but on receiving them. When Jane was staying with maternal relatives at Stoneleigh Abbey in 1806, a Mr Holt Leigh, MP for Wigan in Lancashire, arrived and gave the family ‘franks’ for their letters so they could go for nothing.
In
Mansfield Park
when Fanny is pining for home, Edmund encourages her to write to her brother William. ‘… it will cost William nothing … when you have written the letter, I will take it to my father to frank.’ Sir Thomas is an MP.
Payment was according to weight, which is why single sheets were used economically, and sometimes ‘crossed’ - turned upside down and written between the lines, or written in both directions so that one line of writing was at right angles to another. Two sheets of paper meant ‘double postage’.
At home, the girls’ education was probably much like that of the Bennet sisters in
Pride and Prejudice
. Elizabeth tells Lady Catherine they were always encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary. When Jane was eleven her father was paying a drawing master. Jane’s family considered her to be talented in that direction, and Cassandra and Henry both drew. Jane wrote in a letter when she was forty that she did not have her niece’s ‘fondness for masters’. Fanny Knight’s music teacher, Mr Meyers, ‘gives his three lessons a week - altering his days and his hours … just as he chooses, never very punctual and never giving good measure.’ Jane herself learned the pianoforte in her teens. Jane was fortunate because the instruments were so expensive they were a rare luxury in country parsonages. When Frank Churchill in
Emma
gives a pianoforte to his secret fiancée Jane Fairfax, the gift is munificent indeed, an amenity the impoverished Mrs Bates and her daughter could never have provided.
If Mr and Mrs Austen could not afford to import many masters, the clever father and brothers filled the gap. James and Henry went to Oxford University, where James edited a periodical called
The Loiterer
.
An elegant hand was considered important for letter-writing. Jane’s own letters are beautifully penned, their neat flowing handwriting sloping elegantly to the right. Only quill pens, which quickly wore down and needed recutting, were available to write with. Steel nibs did not come into general use until the mid-nineteenth century. In the circumstances, neat legible handwriting was important and the ability to write small made for economy in paper and postage. Members of Parliament had the privilege of sending mail for nothing, by signing letters above the address. This was called franking. Everybody else had to pay not when sending letters but on receiving them. When Jane was staying with maternal relatives at Stoneleigh Abbey in 1806, a Mr Holt Leigh, MP for Wigan in Lancashire, arrived and gave the family ‘franks’ for their letters so they could go for nothing.
In
Mansfield Park
when Fanny is pining for home, Edmund encourages her to write to her brother William. ‘… it will cost William nothing … when you have written the letter, I will take it to my father to frank.’ Sir Thomas is an MP.
Payment was according to weight, which is why single sheets were used economically, and sometimes ‘crossed’ - turned upside down and written between the lines, or written in both directions so that one line of writing was at right angles to another. Two sheets of paper meant ‘double postage’.
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