The purpose of this study is to show certain aspects of
the position of women in eighteenth-century America -- in
theory and in fact. Such a treatment of theoretical material
is almost of necessity confined to women of the upper and
middle classes. Advice offered women presupposed at least
a bare competence and the opportunity for a conventional
education however meagre that might be. Few writers, if
any, concerned themselves with the appropriate accomplish-
ments or peculiar moral duties of women of laboring fam-
ilies or on the frontier. Letters and journals written by
women themselves usually represent educated and leisure
classes; hence our knowledge of women in the lower ranks
of society is relatively incomplete and offers a wide field for
further investigation.

The first six chapters of the essay deal primarily with
the theoretical aspects of women's position. When educa-
tion attained any considerable proportions it was inextricably
bound up with theory. For this reason it has seemed best
to treat most phases of feminine education in the section on
theory though individual schools often represented actual
attainments as well as ambitious plans. The material
selected for the study of the European background repre-
sents only a portion of the literature on the subject in Eng-
land and France, but it is that part known to have been avail-
able in eighteenth-century America through reprints and
importations, or to have been read and discussed by Ameri-
cans. Comparatively little attention is given to the European
background of the ideas of the Mathers and their contem-

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