5 - Women in educational spaces

Summary

'Bought of Mrs Mary Woodrofe February the 8, 2 shades. Receved of Mrs Atkinson the som of fortey shelling for them. I say receved by me, Kattarn Roberts.' This receipt for the purchase of two lace scarves ('shades') written in her own hand by Kattarn (possibly Katharine) Roberts, working as a saleswoman in 1672, allows us both to question our understanding of women's literacy and to consider the means by which Roberts and other women of her social class learned to write receipts acceptable to book-keepers in substantial households. Even for well-educated women whose families left copious documents relating to their estates and households, there are few records regarding girls' education. Important questions about the education of girls and women remain to be answered. For instance: where did women such as Katharine Roberts, about whom we know little or who left only fragmentary evidence of their ability to write in receipts, short inscriptions in books, or initialled witness statements, learn to write? This chapter will consider educational spaces, whether publicly accessible or private, large or small, immaculately maintained or rough, which sheltered a variety of activities that can be defined broadly as educational. This present volume demonstrates very clearly the growth of women's writing over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England. However, explaining how and where girls were educated remains challenging, because as a number of historians and literary scholars have shown, opinions varied over what girls should be taught, and schools for girls were lacking.