The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary 1822-1872

Abstract

ANNE FIROR SCOTT "SHOULD WOMEN LEARN THE ALPHABET?" asked a nineteenth century feminist, intending irony, and suggesting what we all know, that education can lead to unforeseen and unintended consequences, social and personal. If schools accomplished only their announced purposes, if pupils learned only what they came to learn, the work of the historian of education would be easier than it is. The Troy Female Seminary, officially opened in 1821 but tracing its roots to 1814, was the first permanent institution offering American women a curriculum similar to that of the contemporary men's colleges. The founder stated her purposes clearly: to educate women for responsible motherhood and train some of them to be teachers. It is only in retrospect that the school can be seen to have been an important source of feminism and the incubator of a new style of female personality. The development and spread of nineteenth century feminism represented a major value shift in American culture, the consequences of which reached into almost every aspect of personal and social life. The underlying reasons for this shift, and the mechanism by which new ideas about women's role spread, continue to puzzle and intrigue cultural historians. One reason-there were many others-was a dramatic increase in the number of well educated women. In order to examine the mechanism involved it is necessary first to suggest a way of looking at the distribution of traditional and feminist values in the population. (1) Historians usually divide nineteenth century women into three groups: a tiny handfull of feminists, known to their contemporaries as "strongminded women," another small group of anti-feminists who were artie

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