Competing Visions of Girls' Secondary Education in Post-Revolutionary France

Abstract

Historians of the French Revolution continue to argue about the extent to which it represents a watershed in French history and to debate the novelty of social, political, economic, and cultural formations that emerged from the shambles of the Old Regime. Historians of women have sought to trace the emergence of women's political consciousness and activity, while noting that the first French Republic denied women citizenship. Ultimately, the Revolution relegated women to the private sphere. In these attempts to grapple with the Revolution's legacy for women and gender relations, the Napoleonic period has attracted little attention, in part because the period appears to have been one of general regression for women. Napoleon's Civil Code is seen to symbolize the squelching of all feminist hopes since it firmly established women's subordination within the family and determined married women's loss of civil identity. In the field of education, the balance sheet is similarly negative. Napoleon is recognized for his creation of the Imperial University and of the secondary system of lycees for boys while, in general, primary education and girls' education remain largely unexamined.