Food For Thought - 10/19

As I was reading the first twenty or so pages of The Boarding School several things were grabbing my attention. Some of which may just be me looking in between the lines a little to hard but it is still something that distresses me. I noticed that Foster is trying to convey that women need to be educated and learn lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic, music and dancing, and dress: to name a few. Yet she also stresses something very opposite of these things at the beginning of this novel - that women need to learn to be domestic i.e. be able to do needlework. This novel is a "walking" contridiction, in my eyes. As I was reading though my sources I noticed that they have all noticed the same thing: education is stressed in young women but that it is not what is going to get them through their lives. Reading through these sources also helped me understand the historical context I should be reading this novel, though I may have my opinions as a 21st century scholar; this novel was written by a lady of the 18th century.