A New Era For Females in Education
Louis Antonine Godey, who argued that women all should receive equal education rights, “But if you neglect to educate the mind of a woman, by the speculative difficulties which occur in literature, it can never be educated at all; if you do not effectually rouse it by education, it must remain for ever languid. Uneducated men may escape intellectual degradation; uneducated women cannot.”5 Godey used his magazines to provide a platform for women's interests to spread the word, and women all over who were able to read were moved by his word.
Women were starting to realize they needed education in order to make a name for themselves. They also were starting to see that they could use education to their advantage and start to work and still attend to their husbands and children at home.
There then was a new era for women.Between 1790 and 1830, 182 academies and 14 seminaries were created exclusively for women across the North and South. While a full count for later decades remains unavailable, records from the American Antiquarian Society indicate that at least 158 additional women’s schools were founded from 1830 to 1860, highlighting the growth in educational institutions for women. In Ohio alone, 30 seminaries were established between 1831 and 1851, while North Carolina chartered 22 such schools from 1840 to 1860. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania also supported this trend through legislative efforts, with Pennsylvania offering funding incentives. In 1838-1839, 34 seminaries opened, emphasizing the era's investment in women's education.6
5L. A. Godey, 1856. Godey's Lady's Book, April, 1856, Louis A. Godey. Philadelphia
6 Kelley Mary; University of North Carolina Press. Learning to Stand & Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America's Republic. Chapel Hill, Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press.