In the eighteenth century, a girl raised with the values of gentry society was expected to behave according to well-established norms. In practice, this meant she had to subordinate herself to male authority and appear amiable, accomplished, graceful, dignified, modest, and refined in social situations. Over her emotions and feelings she exercised control. It was drilled into her that any charge of vulgarity or inappropriate behavior, any breach of etiquette, could destroy her reputation. A woman who “talks loud, contradicts bluntly, looks sullen, contests pertinaciously, and instead of yielding, challenges submission” was, according to James Fordyce, author of The Character and Conduct of the Female Sex (1776), lacking in virtue. It was taken as a given that her realm was the domestic sphere, that her marriage had as much (if not more) to do with negotiations between families than with personal choice, and that the duty she performed within that intimate relationship called marriage was to obey and submit.

Education was key in the inculcation and deep-rooting of these qualities and ideas, and during the course of the century, academies, seminaries, and boarding schools for females were established all over Britain. Their advertisements proclaimed that they offered instruction in the polite arts of dancing, music, French, and drawing, as well as needlework (ornamental and useful) and writing. The theory was that through obedience to teachers and school rules and a disciplined, structured education in these subjects, girls born into families of good repute, thus well-bred by birth, would be improved: turned into feminine women, a credit to their sex. They would become well-behaved ladies, companionable, amiable, gracious women who knew how to speak with restraint and conduct themselves as members of the female sex—well-bred through proper nurturing. Education, therefore, would not only teach women to conform to social expectations and know their place in society but to value and be comfortable with their lesser status.

The hope was that this methodology would lead to a good marriage in a refined home in which they would perform their duties as wives submissively, respectfully, virtuously, and graciously, in full awareness of Ephesians 5:22–23 (“Wives, submit yourself unto your husbands, as unto the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church”).