Pride And Prejudice

[DWilly]

Right now I'm reading Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen. It came out before the Victorian Age so, that's why I'm putting this post here and not on the Victorian Era board. Despite being published long before Lizzie was even born there were still a couple of things I've come across in the book that made me think of Lizzie and Emma.

First off, there's mention of private seminaries. Now, when I read that Emma had gone to a seminary I thought it was just some sort of religious type school but in the explanatory notes that came with the book I have it says this about those schools:

" private seminaries: there were numerous fashionable boarding-schools for girls, offering such subjects as French, English, drawing, music, deportment, and elocution, and helping their pupils toward more advantageous marriages that their parents might otherwise have accomplished."

I wonder if maybe Andrew and Abby sent Emma there hoping to get her ready for marriage? I guess they had no such plans for Lizzie.

The other thing I noticed was on pg. 22, Caroline Bingley writes a letter and starts it with " My dear Friend," I guess Lizzie wasn't the only one who back then used that way of starting letters. Maybe it was a rather common way for people to start a letter and not some odd thing Lizzie only did.

Btw, Mr. Darcy is such a pompous you know what I much preferred Rhett Butler as a romantic lead. At least so far. I'm not done with the book yet.

[Kat]

Do you think that seminaries in England might be a bit different than those in America, a bit later in the century which would be when Emma may have attended one?
I looked online at 2 places Len Rebello mentioned to me as candidates for Emma, and they did provide some religious training with the regular studies of the natural sciences, literature, math etc.
Later, the religious emphasis was dropped, but then so was the title "seminary."
Also, one was described as training young women to teach or to be choir directors or Sunday school teachers- which didn't seem to include the womanly art of catching and/or marrying the right man.
The "academies" in this country were more like "finishing schools" where these arts of embroidery, conversational French etc., and probably deportment- were taught.

I only looked at 2, but in these seminaries, in Massachusetts, the curriculum seemed geared toward education and training a young woman to be useful in her community, at least in the early years of their formation.