 |
  |
|
|
Revolution and Romanticism
|
||
A facsimile reprint in the Revolution & Romanticism series chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth ISBN 1 85477 186 8 174 x 110 mm 660 pages |
HANNAH MORE Strictures on Female Education 1799 In her contribution to the 1790s debate on education, Hannah More's enemy is Mary Wollstonecraft, the ‘Female Werter’, or (in Horace Walpole’s phrase) ‘that hyena in petticoats’. Yet both women shared experience of teaching, in More’s case on a considerable and undoubtedly effective scale. And like Wollstonecraft’s Education of Daughters, More’s Strictures regards education as preparing the child to lead a good life and take her place finally in heaven. ‘When a man of sense marries,’ writes More, ‘it is a companion whom he wants ... one who can reason, and reflect, and feel, and judge, and act, and discourse, and discriminate; one who can assist him in his affairs, lighten his cares, soothe his sorrows, strengthen his principles, and educate his children.’ Wollstonecraft herself went no further. £55 $95 The rights of man have been discussed, till we are somewhat wearied with the discussion. To these have been opposed, with more presumption than prudence, the rights of woman. It follows, according to the natural progression of human things, that the next stage of that irradiation which our enlighteners are pouring in upon us will produce grave descants on the rights of children! |
|
  |
||
