In the nineteenth century, English society assumed women to be intellectually
inferior to men, and that too much education would "ruin" girls,
making them unfit for marriage and motherhood. Consequently, most middle
and upper middle class girls were taught little beyond basic reading and
writing, and instead were trained in "accomplishments," such
as music, drawing, and dancing, to better attract eligible suitors.
Yet women who hoped to have their writing taken seriously
in the same arena with mens needed to attain a comparable level
of educationeducation that was all but closed to them for most of
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