Mere Equals: The Paradox of Educated Women in the Early American Republic

3. “The Social Family Circle”: Family Matters

67  Chapter 3 “The Social Family Circle” Family Matters In 1796, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Shippen and her younger sister, Margaret, left their family home in Chester County, Pennsylvania, to attend “Grammar” and “dancing” school in nearby Philadelphia . Although their brother John would miss his sisters’ presence at home, he took “pleasing consolation” that an extended visit to Philadelphia offered “advantages of improvement in an important degree, and at a very important period of Life.” Philadelphia was home to some of the most prestigious institutions in the nation for women’s education and would provide the Shippen sisters, as John noted, “the golden opportunity...of becoming sensible, amiable, and accomplished women.” Along with access to formal education, a visit to the city offered young women such as Elizabeth and Margaret Shippen “other essential opportunities...of improving your mind and manner.” Chief among these opportunities was a rich world of social interaction, in which “the best company resort in the sociable way.” Their participation in various social engagements provided the Shippen sisters with another important form of instruction. In society, John continued: You hear subjects discussed that will give you much valuable information . You see the best of good breeding, untainted by a reserve, a preciseness, and affectation of manners. And, at the same time, you have frequent opportunities of discovering what is proper behavior and 68 CHAPTER 3 good manners in circles, where etiquette, form and fashion, are from convenience and necessity, obliged to prevail. All these insensibly steal upon the mind; and your mind is just ripe for deriving benefits from them, by care, by attention, and by a desire of improvement.1 John urged his sisters to consider social activities as a source of both entertainment and education. To learn to conduct oneself in a “sociable way”was a valuable lesson indeed. Education and sociability were the essential, linked building blocks of a young woman’s coming of age and character development . Accordingly, Elizabeth and Margaret’s education focused on a combination of both “useful” (grammar) and “ornamental” (dancing) subjects, as well as the appropriate display of education in a variety of social settings. As James Neal, educator, of the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia noted, proper attention to education enabled women to be “more perfect ornaments of society, fully calculated to render happy beyond expression, those who participate with you.” Educated women gained numerous advantages that were “inseparably connected with refinement of manners, and a cultivated mind.”2 With their refined manners and cultivated minds, young women such as Elizabeth and Margaret Shippen were well trained to assume their roles in early national society. Families such as the Shippens inhabited a social world where polite ideals of sociability and sensibility reigned. “I...often picture to my mind the social family circle,” Elizabeth noted, where family and close friends gathered together, “enjoying each other’s society, and listening with a pleased attentive ear to Papa’s improving conversation, and instructive account of his travels &c.” The family engaged in social practices based on the intellectual and pleasurable sharing of thoughts, ideas, and emotions. Family members and close friends delighted in “the pleasures of that easy and social intercourse, which is no where more happily experienced than in domestic circles.” Happily assembled around the “fire-side and tea-table,” the Shippen family entertained one another with social converse, often by discussing politics and current events, or perhaps by reading aloud from a newspaper or book.3 Defined by historians as the “cradle of the middle class,” the family unit has received attention from scholars concerned with gender and class formation in nineteenth-century America.4 A study of family and domestic life can also yield insights into the lives and aspirations of educated women. By placing Elizabeth and Margaret Shippen at the center of this family story,I seek in this chapter to move beyond a study of the family as a socioeconomic unit to consider the intersections among women’s educational pursuits, their family “THE SOCIAL FAMILY CIRCLE” 69 life, and their search for mere equality. Surrounded by supportive family and friends, women enacted identities for themselves as “sensible, amiable, and accomplished”members of early national society. The practices and rituals of family-based sociability offered educated women a glimpse of what it might mean to live as the mere equals of man. “Education That Makes the Man, or the Woman” Elizabeth and...