Rational dames and Intrepid Travelers

A Compendious
System of Astronomy ...
NYPL, Pforzheimer
Collection


A Downwright Gabbler,
or a Goose That
Deserves to Be Hissed
NYPL, Print Collection


The History of Mary
Wood, the House-Maid…
NYPL, Pforzheimer
Collection

[Ada Byron]
NYPL, Pforzheimer
Collection

The previous section focused on women who worked in the realms of the imagination. This one concentrates on those who explored the material world, whether through science or travel. Education for women in the Romantic era was underdeveloped. Most people agreed that poor girls should be literate, but many educators limited their teaching to reading without writing. Genteel girls were taught in boarding schools that mostly emphasized the “accomplishments”—fluffy subjects like drawing, dancing, and manners. One advance was made, however, that would later be lost: science education. Science was not much taught in the universities, and so did not have the masculine cachet of the classics. Since work in elementary zoology, botany, mineralogy, astronomy, and other disciplines could easily be carried on from a country house, there was no reason for girls not to engage in these subjects. Many of their science textbooks were anything but fluffy, and many were written by women. In the Victorian era, as the sciences became professionalized, women were shut out, but some extraordinary early women in science— among them, Caroline Herschel, Ada Byron, and Mary Somerville—are remembered.

Memoirs of the Lady
Hester Stanhope
NYPL, Pforzheimer
Collection

Women travelers, too, sought to learn about the material world, and needed a great deal of courage to set off. Some, like Frances Trollope, were economic emigrants; others, like Lady Hester Stanhope, sought freedom from social convention. Travel later became a genteel pursuit for the whole family, and unlike early scientists, women travelers were followed by generations of successors.