A Proper Education
Becoming "Accomplished Women".
"Give a girl and education, and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody..." (Miss Norris on bring Fanny to Mansfield Park)
Knowledge about the concept of education and accomplishments during Jane’s era helps to further enjoy the comedy of Mansfield Park. Although most of Austen’s heroines display a fair level of education and accomplishment that allow them to reach their happy ending, Mansfield Park, the black sheep of Austen’s novel, emphasizes the need of a proper education. Austen exhibits this need by highlighting the flaws of characters that lack this proper education as well as contrasting them to the main characters such as Fanny, who with a proper education is able to obtain her happy ending.
According to Jane Austen in Context, Jane Austen and her contemporaries understood education as not only a schooling of certain skills, practices, and bodies of knowledge, but also as a process of socialization and acculturation based on moral self-discipline. This education caters to the individual, thus it fits the roles the individual is expected to fill in life depending on sex and class. (Kelly 252) With this definition, education for a woman during Jane’s era required basic schooling, religious instruction, as well as household management. The basic schooling involved literacy and mathematical proficiency, but society did not require attendance at a grammar school where these subjects progressed to other areas knowledge. Religious instruction brought moral propriety to the soon-to-be educated girl and an introduction to the community church. Household management brought knowledge in the arts of food preparation, care of the sick, young, and elderly, and so on. These of course were the basic necessities of a woman’s education that involved her gender, and women whose education stopped here, were considered “notable women” rather than accomplished.
An accomplished woman represented her high class, or her potential to bring cultural distinction to her home even if her rank ran slightly inferior. Thus, along with basic education, society demanded that an accomplished woman could either dance, sing, or play an instrument, in addition to being learned in either drawing, painting, needlework, or knowledge in the fashionable languages such as French, and at being well versed in letter writing and polite conversation. Each of these categories brought light to material attributes of a woman. Musical mastery brought attention to her body, creative talents such as drawing, painting, as well as knowledge fashionable language highlighted her refined taste that would bring cultural distinction to a household.
The elements above may have been the requirements of what made an accomplished woman, but during Austen’s time, the extent of this education was highly critiqued—the final verdict being that it fell short. This meant that although women were being trained to hold a semblance of class distinction that elevated them or their families to higher regard in society, they did not always have the moral propriety and sense to make proper decision in running a household. Many critics argued that this form education created a more dependent woman and did not benefit them religiously or morally, and did not help the household in terms of management, rearing or children, or any other general responsibility. Austen, who’s opinion was in harmony with these critics, represented this difference between fashionable education and a morally proper one. This distinction is especially present in Mansfield Park.
Within Mansfield Park, although Maria and Julia Bertram have large base of knowledge compared to Fanny, as mentioned early in the novel, “Fanny could read, work, and write, but she had been taught nothing more; and as her cousins found her ignorant of many things which they had been long familiar.” Although at first it seems that Fanny is at a disadvantage in comparison to her cousins with education, it becomes quite apparent in the novel that Fanny, with her strong regard to morality has achieved in Austen’s view, a proper education. Thus, as a girl who, much to her more fashionable cousins disgust, found drawing and painting irksome ends with the most important education of education: good sense and good morals.
Knowledge about the concept of education and accomplishments during Jane’s era helps to further enjoy the comedy of Mansfield Park. Although most of Austen’s heroines display a fair level of education and accomplishment that allow them to reach their happy ending, Mansfield Park, the black sheep of Austen’s novel, emphasizes the need of a proper education. Austen exhibits this need by highlighting the flaws of characters that lack this proper education as well as contrasting them to the main characters such as Fanny, who with a proper education is able to obtain her happy ending.
According to Jane Austen in Context, Jane Austen and her contemporaries understood education as not only a schooling of certain skills, practices, and bodies of knowledge, but also as a process of socialization and acculturation based on moral self-discipline. This education caters to the individual, thus it fits the roles the individual is expected to fill in life depending on sex and class. (Kelly 252) With this definition, education for a woman during Jane’s era required basic schooling, religious instruction, as well as household management. The basic schooling involved literacy and mathematical proficiency, but society did not require attendance at a grammar school where these subjects progressed to other areas knowledge. Religious instruction brought moral propriety to the soon-to-be educated girl and an introduction to the community church. Household management brought knowledge in the arts of food preparation, care of the sick, young, and elderly, and so on. These of course were the basic necessities of a woman’s education that involved her gender, and women whose education stopped here, were considered “notable women” rather than accomplished.
An accomplished woman represented her high class, or her potential to bring cultural distinction to her home even if her rank ran slightly inferior. Thus, along with basic education, society demanded that an accomplished woman could either dance, sing, or play an instrument, in addition to being learned in either drawing, painting, needlework, or knowledge in the fashionable languages such as French, and at being well versed in letter writing and polite conversation. Each of these categories brought light to material attributes of a woman. Musical mastery brought attention to her body, creative talents such as drawing, painting, as well as knowledge fashionable language highlighted her refined taste that would bring cultural distinction to a household.
The elements above may have been the requirements of what made an accomplished woman, but during Austen’s time, the extent of this education was highly critiqued—the final verdict being that it fell short. This meant that although women were being trained to hold a semblance of class distinction that elevated them or their families to higher regard in society, they did not always have the moral propriety and sense to make proper decision in running a household. Many critics argued that this form education created a more dependent woman and did not benefit them religiously or morally, and did not help the household in terms of management, rearing or children, or any other general responsibility. Austen, who’s opinion was in harmony with these critics, represented this difference between fashionable education and a morally proper one. This distinction is especially present in Mansfield Park.
Within Mansfield Park, although Maria and Julia Bertram have large base of knowledge compared to Fanny, as mentioned early in the novel, “Fanny could read, work, and write, but she had been taught nothing more; and as her cousins found her ignorant of many things which they had been long familiar.” Although at first it seems that Fanny is at a disadvantage in comparison to her cousins with education, it becomes quite apparent in the novel that Fanny, with her strong regard to morality has achieved in Austen’s view, a proper education. Thus, as a girl who, much to her more fashionable cousins disgust, found drawing and painting irksome ends with the most important education of education: good sense and good morals.