Skip to main content
Log in

Transformation of Patriarchal Regimes, Literacy, and Schooling

  • Published:
Interchange Aims and scope Submit manuscript

    We’re sorry, something doesn't seem to be working properly.

    Please try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, please contact support so we can address the problem.

Abstract

Literacy has been among the most publicly contested domains in gender struggles; the way that history of literacy is gendered and interpreted makes a difference to the way reading and writing is thought of today. Broadly understood, gender signals a wide range of concerns with subjectivities, social relations, and historical dynamics. Literacy campaigns can be linked both to attempts to consolidate patriarchalism in early modern Europe and to complex struggles attending its 18th-century demise. In 19th-century England, both bourgeois and oppositional public spheres engendered patterns of solidarity, identity, gender polarization, and exclusion in which contested notions of individual and collective literacy played a key role. Elsewhere, schools were called upon to engender a proletariat or tame its radicalism, teach females how to read or change their reading habits, instruct children in writing or give them to understand that their mother tongue did not count as school knowledge.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

REFERENCES

  • Barkin, K. (1983). Social control and the volksschule in Vormärz, Prussia. Central European History, 16(1), 31–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Connell, R.W. (2002). Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidoff, L. & Hall, C. (1987). Family fortunes: Men and women of the English middle class, 1780-1850. London: Hutchinson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eley, G. (1992). Nations, publics and political cultures. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eley, G. (1990). Edward Thompson, social history and political culture: The making of a working-class public, 1780-1850. In H.J. Kaye & K. McClelland (Eds.), E.P.Thompson: Critical perspectives. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gagnier, R. (1991). Subjectivities: A history of self-representation in Britain. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graff, H.S. (1987). The legacies of literacy: Continuities and contradictions in Western society and culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higonnet, P. (1980). The politics of linguistic terrorism and grammatical hegemony during the French Revolution. Social History, 5(1), 41–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hobsbawm, E. (1992). Nations and nationalism since 1780 (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joyce, P. (1991). The people's English: Language and class in England c.1840-1920. In P. Burke & R. Porter (Eds.), Language, self and society: A social history of language. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landes, J.B. (1988). Women and the public sphere in the age of the French revolution Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Langins, J. (1987). Words and institutions during the French Revolution. In P. Burke & R. Porter (Eds.), The social history of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, P. (1998). Transformations of patriarchy in the West, 1500-1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pateman, C. (1988). The sexual contract. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spender, D. (1980). Man made language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, J.W. (1989). French feminists and the rights of “man:” Olympe de Gouge's declarations. History Workshop, 28, 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, R.L. & Valenze, W.M. (1988). Mutuality and marginality: Liberal moral theory and working-class women in nineteenth-century England. Signs, 13(2), 277–298.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, R. (1965). The long revolution. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Miller, P. Transformation of Patriarchal Regimes, Literacy, and Schooling. Interchange 34, 297–312 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:INCH.0000015906.19694.4a

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:INCH.0000015906.19694.4a

Navigation