De l'éducation des femmes en français, langue seconde, dans les Pays-Bas des XVIe-XIXe siècles

Abstract

In 16th-19th century Holland young ladies of the aristocracy and upper middle classes were commonly educated in French, their second language. They frequented institutions often directed by the wife of the owner of the local French school for boys, or an unmarried lady or in the well-organized nineteenth-century school system, a well-educated female teacher who sometimes was the authoress of a school manual. In the eighteenth century this work was frequently entrusted to a French speaking governess who lived with the family and was duly supervised by the girls’ mother. The aim of their education was not to turn them into bluestockings or coquettes but to prepare them for their role as head of a prominent household, a reasonable and loving wife and mother, an attentive hostess and capable of playing her part in the local community.