Women’s Education and the Flourishing of the Arts in Eighteenth-Century America

Abstract

This paper focuses on the debate over women's education in the eighteenth century. Articles from journals, but also treaties, pamphlets, essays, and literary books are taken into consideration in order to give the controversial, often ambiguous atmosphere of the debate. Special emphasis is given to the role of the fine arts in the development of female education: on the one hand, they represented a remedy against her vanity, and a way to express her intellectual side, on the other hand, they represented a threat to the stability of traditional domesticity.