English society at the end of the end of the 18th century viewed women in association with, and dependent on, men. Marriage was an important part of society, since it was the only accepted future for young ladies. Therefore marriage was the main focus of middle class and aristocratic women’s education and an education based on accomplishments that could, as Mary Wollstonecraft has noted, make them vain and superficial. The book studies ; Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, and Elizabeth Inchbald’s Wedding Day, Everyone has his fault, Wives as They Were and Maids as They Are and Lover’s Vows, although coherent with their time, show independent female characters whose education allows them to think for themselves and not merely repeat opinions that they do not even understand; or just obey male orders and desires. That allows them to have a marriage based on equality. In Austen and Inchbald’s work marriage is based on love, being a union of equal minds that love and understand each other. This book discusses the situation of women at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, how the authors approch the issue of choice, female education, and marriage for love as a union of equal minds.
FEMALE EDUCATION FROM A MEDICAL STANDPOINT.
