The education of young girls from good families is generally done in the convent because it is considered that religion must be part of female education, to guarantee the morality and stability of the home. However, a little examination of the content of this education reveals a heartbreaking poverty. At the convent, young girls learn drawing, music, embroidery, tapestry and dance. Let's add a bit of general knowledge: grammar, arithmetic, geography, history. This description is roughly consistent with the Martin girls' school books. We also find in their library a summary of mythology, elements of physics and chemistry, and even a book of elements of the English language belonging to Céline. But let's not dream: the Martin sisters' typical school book measures 14,5 cm by 9 and with a fairly large typography; the contents of one of these books would fit into a good magazine article or two. If young girls dream of learning more, they must rely on their brothers for private lessons, as Madeleine Sophie Barat did to learn Greek and Latin with the agreement of her parents. (Foundress of the Sacred Heart. "Her parents gladly satisfied her tastes for study, where her elder brother directed her, himself a very brilliant student at the college in the town of Joigny." cf. Geoffroy de Grandmaison, La Bse Mère Barat 1779-1865, Paris, Gabalda, 1909).
Finally, the emphasis is on “good manners”, this code of good manners. “Don't wrinkle your forehead or your nose,” recommends a mid-century youth advice manual; don't hold your lips too tight or too open, and don't make faces or grimaces. (...) It is necessary to avoid (...) a pretentious dress, mocking airs, sudden movements, a bold countenance, impertinent and protective signs, cute smiles, jester gestures, a nonchalant pose, etc. ” This text analyzes with an astonishing wealth of detail the way of standing, sitting, walking, greeting, speaking... We are overwhelmed by the incredible number of prohibitions of which it is composed: gaze, head, neck, gait, posture, representing constant subjugation for young girls especially. The Martin sisters have a manual of this kind: Clarisse JURANVILLE, Know-how and good manners in the various circumstances of life: practical guide to everyday life for young girls, Paris, Boyer et Cie, [1885].
Let us summarize the formation of the young bourgeoise: general knowledge, good manners and arts of pleasure, all punctuated by prayers and edifying readings. Leisure (the Martin girls were walking in the Jardin de l'Étoile, a private garden reserved for a few large families on an annual subscription of 30 F.), friendships and thoughts are rather controlled: we do not seek to translate this training into personal emancipation . Because it remains dangerous for the woman, judges Eliza Guizot, to devote itself to the pleasures of the spirit, to the intellectual occupations - the century fears the uncontrolled access of the women to the writing.
With regard to the quality of education, an 1864 survey established that more than half of the boarding schools, and the largest in terms of numbers, were run by nuns who, in their great majority, did not have the capacity certificate. The supervisory provisions in this regard contained in the law and regulated in 1854 had already fallen into disuse barely four years later!
Most of the higher level women's establishments therefore presented themselves as a kind of higher primary school. The few attempts to raise women's studies come up against the inertia of the great teaching congregations themselves and the ill will of some prelates who consider such a project superfluous where, in their eyes, it was a question of forming good mothers. of family. A Bishop Dupanloup will have to rise up to vigorously fight these currents of thought prohibiting women from engaging in intellectual occupations. This prelate, named bishop of Orléans in 1849 (died in 1878), was a leader in the struggle for freedom of education and an ardent defender of liberal Catholicism. For him, defense of Christian education and religious and social defense were linked. He goes so far as to make future generations dependent on feminine culture and faith. In his thought, the education of women constituted one of the major parts of a plan for the apostolic reconquest of French society; he was convinced that official atheism and laxity would be cured by a better education of women. He felt that this was one of the most decisive keys to the social and religious future.
It is interesting to note that when the young Thérèse copied into her school notebooks a long text entitled "My library" and describing the choices that a young girl had to make, the three volumes of The Education of Mgr Dupanloup were ranked first. , before La Fontaine's Fables! (Cahier n° 12, p. 85-86)
Paradoxically working for the same cause, the school laws of Jules Ferry (1882) will modify the distressing situation of inferiority faced by girls. Ferry and the Republicans began by filing two bills in 1879. Together with the expulsions of religious, there was a question of destroying the quasi-clerical monopoly of the education of young girls. Convinced that “the one who holds the woman holds everything”, Ferry creates in 1880 the secular education of young girls by having the Camille Sée law passed on December 21, 1880. The following year, it was the École Normale Supérieure for young girls, with the law of July 26, 1881 founding the École Normale Supérieure for young girls in Sèvres.
The obligation of the competency certificate guarantees a better quality of private and public education in the future. The laws on gratuitousness (1881) secularism and obligation (1882) follow. It is in this vein that Mr. Guérin will contribute to the creation of the Bon Pasteur institution for the girls of the Paroisse St-Jacques in 1889. Over time, at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, we will see a new form of teaching set up for girls with a renewed and well-trained faculty, with the adoption of a teaching program closer to that of boys' high schools. It will not really be in place until around the First World War. Let us recall, at the beginning of this century, the story of Marie Curie, the first woman to have acquired the right to compete with men in a field which until then they had entirely dominated. The scientific elite of her time were convinced that her discoveries were the work of her husband Pierre Curie, as it was considered impossible for a woman to be intellectually capable of such work.
In Lisieux itself, the city experienced real intellectual activity at this time thanks to a very cultured liberal class, but we find the same scenario there. There is a Literary Circle, for men only. Same thing for the Historical Society, which focuses on research, conservation and study of documents from the history of the Lexovian country: no woman in the list of members published in the Bulletin of the society. As for the interesting Emulation Society of Friends of Science, Letters, Arts, Agriculture and Industry: no women in the list of members published in the Bulletin des travaux de la société. The Horticultural and Botanical Society, created to advance gardening, admits a few women but as ladies patronesses. Finally, the Society of Friends of the University of Normandy to establish and develop a regional university in Caen will specify, when it was founded in 1897, that it is open to ladies.
Read the rest of this article: Horizons of women at the end of the XNUMXth century in Lisieux, in Carmelite Teresa - Centenary Colloquium, published by Cerf.
