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| Hawley, John C., S.J. “The Muscular Christian
as Schoolmarm,” in Kristine Ottesen Garrigan, Victorian Scandals: Representations
of Gender and Class (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1992): 134-156.
Hawley examines Kingsley's views on the role of women in society, focusing in particular on their educational provision. Believing that the deliberately inadequate education of many young middle-class women had rendered them just as much societal victims as the children of the poor, Kingsley argued that the education of the former must be improved. Hawley declares that Kingsley held a middle ground between the conservatives who viewed women's education as essentially decorative and the progressives who considered that the male and female curriculum should be identical: "Kingsley's implied compromise endorses subjects that would turn out intelligent social workers rather than stereotypical bluestockings" (139). Hawley also states that Kingsley's work and writings supporting improved education for women were not complemented by support for all aspects of the women's movement. Believing in essential differences between men and women and ultimately ambivalent on the Woman Question, Kingsley was critical of women's suffrage and caricatured those women who refused to allow men to lead the movement for their rights. Education; Women's Movement; Females. |