Catherine Sedgwick's Analysis

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Education lacked greatly for women until the idea of republican motherhood emerged, then education became essential. Education and schools for young women flourished in the new republic due to the changing expectations of women. Republican motherhood supported the idea of educated women because it shows her commitment to her family and shows that she wants to provide them with all the knowledge she has. A key turn for education was the development of The Young Ladies’ Academy. “The Young Ladies’ Academy, the first school of its kind in the United States, opened in Philadelphia on June 4, 1787” (List “Post-Revolutionary Women” 66). In the new republic a majority of the magazines discussed women’s education and the benefits of women’s education …show more content…

Women would take their knowledge and regurgitate it to her children to better educate them. The idea of education was not for their own sake, but for the sake of their husbands and children. Catherine Sedgwick stressed the importance of education to young girls in her novel Means, Ends, or Self-Training saying that education was a privilege. She wrote that this great privilege that was available to them would empower them to “acquire the domestic knowledge that will make the humblest home comfortable” (Sedgwick 2). Sedgwick talked about how being educated will make women more independent and that she will not have to depend on her father or husband. In the American Museum it was “stressed that men and women were not equally susceptible to the benefits of education…” (List “Post-Revolutionary Woman” 73). The Young Ladies’ Academy laid the foundation for many schools to be opened and to be established. For example, in 1821 Emma Willard opened Troy Female Seminary in New York and in 1826, the first public high schools for girls opened in New York and Boston. By 1850 the literacy gap between men and women was practically neutral (List “Post-Revolutionary Woman” 66). The idea of republican motherhood shaped women’s future the most

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