O chyldren! Geue eare your duties to learne: The education of upper-class Englishwomen in late medieval and early modern England

Abstract

The hereditary aristocracy of England used education to maintain its cultural, political, and economic superiority of men and women in the hierarchy of society. Aristocratic education was training for leadership of the group and the skills taught were those that the group defined as signifying a leader. Part of aristocratic education was also based around play and conspicuous consumption. The sentiments of the twentieth-century slogans, "if you've got it, flaunt it," and "let the good times roll" would not have seemed foreign to a fifteenth-century English aristocrat. These principles were adopted by those who moved into the upper classes of society.

The main venue for the provision of education for elite women was the household. Women were taught the skills necessary to run a large and complex household organization and were also instructed in the skills needed for success in court circles. They learned needlework, the tenets of hospitality, dancing, music, hunting, hawking, archery, and the basic doctrines needed for the proper practice of orthodox religion.

This study gives a detailed account of medieval views of women, how women were educated, and, through examples of individual women, how they used this education to establish their positions in society.