Knowing Women
Origins of Women's Education in Nineteenth-Century Australia

A comprehensive study of female education in nineteenth-century Australia, rich in narrative detail.

Marjorie R. Theobald (Author)

9780521422321, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 1 January 1996

308 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'… excellent account … scholarly, challenging and eminently readable.' History of Education

Knowing Women is a comprehensive study of female education in nineteenth-century Australia, placed in international perspective. It covers a wide range of topics, including the evolution of the teaching profession; the private ladies' academies and their proprietors; the entry of women to the universities and the professions; the establishment of academic secondary schools, both Church and state; girls' experience of compulsory state elementary schooling; and the schooling of outcast girls. The study is rich in narrative and biographical interest, based, where possible, on the experiences of individual girls and women. Knowing Women explores the ambiguities of its material, showing how education could both open and restrict opportunities for women. The author's perspective allows her to contribute to current historical debates on women, culture, education, sexuality and the state.

1. The woman at the piano: women, education and culture in the nineteenth-century frame of reference
2. The lost ladies' schools of colonial Australia
3. The keystone of the arch? Women and the universities in colonial Australia
4. Inventing the secondary school for girls: Brisbane Girls' Grammar School and Sydney Girls' High School
5. The administration of gender: the case of Victoria's lady teachers, 1850–1900
6. The everyday world of women who taught: some theoretical considerations
7. Daughters of the state: the first compulsory generations, 1870–1890
8. The schooling of outcast girls
9. Notes on writing the history of women's education.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM]