‘A Peculiar Education’: Epistolary Networks, Knowledge and Critical Thinking

Simon-Martin, Meritxell

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-41441-2_3

Meritxell Simon-Martin²

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Abstract

This chapter examines the mid-Victorian feminist claim for better education for women as articulated by Bodichon at the intersection of her publications and letters. I first discuss Bodichon’s most relevant works on this demand. This chapter moves on to explore the epistolary unfolding of Bodichon’s stance on the question of religious education and women’s access to schooling. Hence, in line with Bildung’s notion of dialogical learning, I explore the pivotal axis epistolary networks among Bodichon and her female friends played in providing her with a forum for learning and self-discovery where she acquired knowledge and exercised her critical thinking. I suggest that Bodichon shaped her own outlook in the process of epistolary learning stimulated by the activities she undertook within the framework of her later informal education: school visiting, traveling and reading. I argue that, in the process, she began developing her feminist understanding of women needing better education opportunities as a springboard to achieving equality.

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Notes

1.
Parkes to Bodichon, 5 December 1849, Cambridge University, Girton College Archives, Girton College Personal Papers (GCPP) Parkes 5/39.
2.
John Roberts, Wilhelm von Humboldt and German Liberalism (Oakville and Niagara Falls, 2009), 11, 29.
3.
David Sorkin, ‘Wilhelm von Humboldt: The Theory and Practice of Self-Formation (Bildung), 1791–1810’, Journal of the History of Ideas 44/1 (1983): 55–73; Christoph Lüth, ‘On Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Theory of Bildung Dedicated to Wolfgang Klafki for his 70th Birthday’, Journal of Curriculum Studies 30/1 (1998): 43–60.
4.
Lars Løvlie and Paul Standish, ‘Introduction: Bildung and the Idea of a Liberal Education’, in Educating Humanity: Bildung in Postmodernity, ed. by Lars Løvlie, Klaus P. Mortensen and Sven E. Nordenbo, 4, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
5.
Lüth, ‘On Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Theory’, 54; Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘History of the Fall and Decline of the Greek City States’ (1807–1808), 188–218, in Marianne Cowan (ed.), Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the Writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963), 81.
6.
Sorkin, ‘Wilhelm von Humboldt’, 59–60.
7.
See, for example, On the Study of Antiquity and Especially the Greeks (1793), published in German Über das Studium des Altertums und des griechischen inbesondere, see John W. Burrow (ed.), The Limits of State Action (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), xxxviii.
8.
Bleicher, ‘Bildung’, 364.
9.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, reprinted in Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (eds.), Wilhelm von Humboldts Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: B. Bher’s Verlag, 1903–1920) Vol. 13, 188, in Sorkin, ‘Wilhelm von Humboldt’, 62–3.
10.
Ruth Watts, Gender, Power and the Unitarians in England, 1760–1860 (London: Longman, 1998), 16.
11.
Watts, Gender, Power and the Unitarians, 33.
12.
Ibid., chapters 2 and 3.
13.
Ibid., 59.
14.
Pam Hirsch, Barbara Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Rebel (London: Chatto and Windus, 1998), 18.
15.
Ibid., 7.
16.
Julia Smith’s comments on James Buchanan, Barbara I. Buchanan (ed.), Buchanan Family Records: James Buchanan and his Descendants (Capetown: Townshend, Taylor and Snashall, 1923), 27.
17.
William A. C. Stewart and William P. McCann, The Educational Innovators, 1750–1880 (London: Macmillan, 1967), 245.
18.
Bodichon to Florence [Davenport-Hill?], 5 Blandford Square, 1 July [1850s], Buchanan (ed.), Buchanan Family
Records, 26; Hirsch, Barbara Bodichon, 17, 19.
19.
Hirsch, Barbara Bodichon, 18.
20.
Bodichon to Florence [Davenport-Hill?], 5 Blandford Square, 1 July [1850s], Buchanan (ed.), Buchanan Family Records, 25.
21.
Hirsch, Barbara Bodichon, 31–2, 101.
22.
Ibid., 39–40.
23.
Ibid., 33.
24.
Ibid., 46.
25.
Watts Watts, Gender, Power and the Unitarians, 8–9.
26.
Hirsch, Barbara Bodichon, 19.
27.
Bodichon to James Buchanan, Pelham Crescent, Hastings, 10 October 1848, Buchanan (ed.), Buchanan Family Records, 17.
28.
Hirsch, Barbara Bodichon, 31.
29.
Meritxell Simon-Martin, ‘Educational Place and Space: The Unconventional Education of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827–1891)’, History of Education Researcher 89 (May 2012): 7–17.
30.
Meritxell Simon-Martin, ‘Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon’s Bildung: Education, Feminism and Agency in Letters’, in Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte un/diszipliniert? Aktuelle Beiträge aus der jungen Forschung, ed. by Alexia Bumbaris et al, 41–65, Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2016.
31.
Kim Atkins and Catriona Mackenzie (eds.), Practical Identity and Narrative Agency (New York and London: Routledge, 2008).
32.
Esculapius, ‘The Education of Women’, 28 July 1848, The Hastings and St Leonards’ News, Number 13, 4.
33.
Ibid.
34.
Author of The Women of England (1838), The Wives of England (1843), The Mothers of England (1844), The Daughters of England (1846).
35.
Esculapius, ‘The Education of Women’.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Esculapius, ‘Female education’, 25 August 1848, The Hastings and St Leonards’ News, Number 17, 4.
38.
Ibid.
39.
Esculapius, ‘The Education of Women’, 28 July 1848, The Hastings and St Leonards’ News, Number 13, 4.
40.
Ibid.
41.
Unsigned, ‘Female Education in the Middle Classes’, The English Woman’s Journal 1/4 (June 1858): 217–27. Probably in reference to Queen’s College (1848), Bedford College (1849), The North London Collegiate School (1850) and Cheltenham Ladies’ College (1853).
42.
Ibid., 219.
43.
Ibid., 217.
44.
Ibid., 218.
45.
Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1859).
46.
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, ‘Middle-Class Schools for Girls’, The English Woman’s Journal 6/33 (November 1860): 168–77 (168–9).
47.
Ibid., 169.
48.
Ibid., 170.
49.
Ibid., 173.
50.
Ibid., 172.
51.
Ibid.
52.
Ibid., 172–3.
53.
Ibid., 173.
54.
Ibid.
55.
Ibid., 174.
56.
Ibid., 175.
57.
Ibid., 176.
58.
Clare Midgley, Feminism and Empire: Women Activists in Imperial Britain, 1790–1865 (London: Routledge, 2016).
59.
Bodichon, ‘Middle-Class Schools for Girls’, 176.
60.
Ibid. See also, for example, Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (eds.), Western Women and Imperialism. Complicity and Resistance (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992); Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History. British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
61.
H.C. Barnard, A History of English Education: From 1760 (London: University of London Press, 1961–1968), chapters 6, 7, 8, 11.
62.
Hirsch, Barbara Bodichon, 39–40.
63.
Parkes to Bodichon, 20 April 1847, GCPP 5/7; Parkes to Bodichon, 21 April 1947, GCPP 5/8; Parkes to Bodichon, 25 June 1847, GCPP 5/10.
64.
Bodichon to Parkes, 15 December 1847, GCPP Parkes 5/164.
65.
Parkes to Bodichon, 16 December 1847, GCPP Parkes 5/17.
66.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘An Attempt to Define the Legal Limits of Government’ (1792), 106, in Cowan (ed.), Humanist Without Portfolio, 142–3.
67.
David A. Gerber, ‘Acts of Deceiving and Withholding in Immigrant Letters: Personal Identity and Self- Presentation in Personal Correspondence’, Journal of Social History 39/2 (2005): 315–30.
68.
Nigel Hall, Anne Robinson and Leslie Crawford, ‘Young Children’s Explorations of Letter Writing’, in Letter Writing as a Social Practice, ed. by David Barton and Nigel Hall, 146, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000.
69.
Janet Martin, ‘Death Row Penfriends. Some Effects of Letter Writing on Identity and Relationships’, in Letter Writing as a Social Practice, 160.
70.
Janet G. Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982), chapter 2.
71.
As Altman argues, when one writes, ‘one evokes the presence of the addressee. For this reason, what we might call “interior dialogue” or “pseudodialogue” is a fundamental occurrence in epistolary discourse,’ Altman,
Epistolarity, 137.
72.
Ibid., 51.
73.
Ibid., 30.
74.
Paul Ricoeur, ‘Life in Quest of Narrative’, in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, ed. by David Wood, London: Routledge, 1991.
75.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘Basics Characteristics of Linguistic Types’ (1824–1826), 380, in Cowan (ed.),
Humanist Without Portfolio, 65.
76.
Altman, Epistolarity, 135.
77.
Simon Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought. An Introductory Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 8.
78.
Paraphrasing Loots, Coppens and Sermijn, each time Parkes addresses a question to Bodichon, Bodichon is incited to take a particular entryway, Gerrit Loots, Kathleen Coppens and Jasmina Sermijn, ‘Practising a Rhizomatic Perspective in Narrative Research’, in Doing Narrative Research, ed. by Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire and Maria Tamboukou, 117, London: Sage, 2008.
79.
Altman, Epistolarity, 148.
80.
Ibid., 122.
81.
Parkes to Bodichon, 24 December 1847, GCPP Parkes 5/18.
82.
Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought, 15.
83.
Ibid.
84.
For a discussion of the dialogue as a source of knowledge see Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought, 24–5, 28.
85.
Corinne Squire, ‘From Experience-Centred to Socioculturally-Oriented Approaches to Narrative’ in Andrews, Squire and Tamboukou (eds.), Doing Narrative Research, 49.
86.
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Submission to ‘Answers to the Circular of Questions’ of the Education Commission (1858), Parliamentary Papers, Vol. V, 103–05.
87.
Hirsch, Barbara Bodichon, 76.
88.
Bodichon to Annie Buchanan, Sorrento, Italy, 17 May 1855, Buchanan (ed.), Buchanan Family Records, 21.
89.
Bodichon to William Allingham, 2 August 1863, 5 Blandford Square, N.W., Helen Allingham and E. Baumer Williams (eds.), Letters to William Allingham (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911), 80–1.
90.
That is, narrativizing the same ‘event’ by different narrators at different times and under different circumstances, Wendy Patterson, ‘Narratives of Events: Labovian Narrative Analysis and its Limitations’, in Andrews, Squire and Tamboukou (eds.), Doing Narrative Research, 34.
91.
Miri Song and David Parker, ‘Commonality, Difference and the Dynamics of Disclosure in in-depth Interviewing’, Sociology 29/2 (1995): 241–56, discussed in Ann Phoenix, ‘Analysing narrative contexts’, in Doing Narrative Research, 79.
92.
Altman, Epistolarity, 57.
93.
Wallace, The Network Self, 119.
94.
A self might ‘communicatively partition off aspects of itself, as, for example, it may do in self-deception. Or, a self might be conflicted, at war with itself, indecisive. Or there could be more serious cases of fragmentation, such as dissociative identity disorder.’ Ibid., 120.
95.
In the words of Patterson, an event-centric approach to narratives ‘fails to appreciate the essential creativity of the act of telling a story of personal experience, which involves reconstructing the past for the purposes of the present telling,’ Patterson, ‘Narratives of Events’, 36.
96.
As Patterson explains, William Labov distinguishes between referential narrative clauses, which focus on the ‘event,’ and evaluative narrative clauses, which focus on the experience of this event, Ibid.
97.
Drawing on Diana Meyers’ feminist conceptualization of autonomy as one’s capacity to act in accordance with one’s evolving sense of self, in Chap. 4, I explain in detail Meyers’ concepts of self-discovery, self-definition, self-direction (programmatic and episodic) and life plan. Diana T. Meyers, Self, Society and Personal Choice (New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1989).
98.
Elizabeth J. MacArthur, Extravagant Narratives: Closure and Dynamics in the Epistolary Form (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 207–8.
99.
Altman, Epistolarity, 50.
100.
I—you necessarily structures meaning in letter narrative, Altman, Epistolarity, 118–9.
101.
Altman, Epistolarity, 119.
102.
Barnard, A History of English Education, chapters 14–15.
103.
June Purvis, A History of Women’s Education in England (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1991), 64–8.
104.
Joyce S. Pedersen, The Reform of Girls’ Secondary and Higher Education in Victorian England (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1987), 141–3.
105.
Purvis, A History of Women’s Education, 97–106.
106.
Ibid., 106–7.
107.
Ibid., 75.
108.
Barnard, A History of English Education, chapters 6, 7, 8, 11.
109.
Ray Strachey, The Cause. A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1928), 60–3; see also Margaret J. Tuke (1939) A History of Bedford College for Women (London and New York: Oxford University Press).
110.
Philippa Levine, Victorian Feminism, 1850–1900 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), 32–4; see also Josephine Kamm, How Different from Us. A Biography of Miss Buss and Miss Beale (London: Bodley Head, 1958); Amy K. Clarke, A History of the Cheltenham Ladies College, 1853–1953 (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1953).
111.
The Princess is a narrative poem that tells the story of a princess, Ida, who, defying custom, founds a university for women. With the help of two friends, the prince to whom she was betrothed in infancy manages to enter the institution disguised in female attire. The three young men are discovered and, in the fight for the princess’ hand, are seriously wounded. They are nursed back to health by the college students and, eventually, Ida returns to the prince.
112.
Howitt to Bodichon, [26 December 1847], Columbia University, Butler Library, Leonore Beaky Letters of Howitt to Bodichon, letter 4. Howitt’s letters are only available in typescript copy and are quoted on trust.
113.
Howitt to Bodichon, [29 December 1847], Beaky, letter 5.
114.
Howitt to Bodichon, [5 January 1848], Beaky, letter 6.
115.
Parkes to Bodichon, 5 January 1848, London Metropolitan University, Women’s Library, Papers of Barbara McCrimmon related to Barbara Bodichon Bodichon, 7BMC/F16.
116.
Parkes to Bodichon, [January 1848], GCPP Parkes 5/19.
117.
Parkes to Bodichon, 28 January 1848, GCPP Parkes 5/20.
118.
Patterson, ‘Narratives of Events’, 34.
119.
Parkes to Bodichon, 28 January 1848, GCPP Parkes 5/20.
120.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘Plan for a Comparative Anthropology’ (1795), 382, in Cowan (ed.), Humanist Without Portfolio, 74.
121.
Loots, Coppens and Sermijn, ‘Practising a Rhizomatic Perspective in Narrative Research’, 117–9.
122.
Patterson, ‘Narratives of Events’, 40.
123.
Loots, Coppens and Sermijn, ‘Practising a Rhizomatic Perspective in Narrative Research’, 117–8.
124.
In this case, Howitt’s and Parkes’ narrated ‘I’ emerge in their own epistolary narratives only (out of their epistolary ‘I’s only, which intrinsically involve an epistolary ‘you’—here, Bodichon’s). In other instances, Bodichon’s narrated ‘I’ emerges out of her epistolary ‘I,’ ‘you’ and ‘she.’
125.
Altman, Epistolarity, 30.
126.
Martin, ‘Death Row Penfriends’, 169.
127.
Altman, Epistolarity, 42–3.
128.
As a result, each entry ‘presents multiple perspectives and internal commentary, putting into question the possibility of objective truth or stable authority,’ MacArthur, Extravagant Narratives, 22.
129.
Ibid.
130.
Martin, ‘Death Row Penfriends’, 168.
131.
Mary Louis Pratt defines ‘feminotopia’ as ‘episodes that present idealized worlds of female autonomy, empowerment and pleasure’, Mary L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 166–7, quoted in Marijn S. Kaplan, ‘Epistolary Silence in Françoise de Graffigny’s Letters d’une Péruvienne (1747)’, Atlantis 29/1 (Fall-Winter 2004): 106–12.
132.
Martin, ‘Death Row Penfriends’, 168–9.
133.
MacArthur, Extravagant Narratives, 207–8.
134.
Jane Rendall, ‘Friendship and Politics: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827–1891) and Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829–1925)’, in Sexuality and Subordination: Interdisciplinary Studies of Gender in the Nineteenth Century, ed. by Susan Mendus and Jane Rendall, 163, London and New York: Routledge, 1989.
135.
Rendall , ‘Friendship and Politics’, 137, referring to the works by Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love between Women from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (New York: Morrow, 1981) and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, ‘The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America’, Signs 1/1 (1975): 1–29.
136.
Bodichon, ‘Middle-Class Schools for Girls’, 169.
137.
Unsigned, ‘Female Education in the Middle Classes’, 218.

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Simon-Martin, M. (2020). ‘A Peculiar Education’: Epistolary Networks, Knowledge and Critical Thinking. In: Barbara Bodichon’s Epistolary Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41441-2_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41441-2_3
Published: 01 July 2020
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