VOL. 62, BOOK 1, PART C, 2024, pp. 195 – 204 Full text (En)
Author: Maria Dimitrova
Affiliation: St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia
Abstract
The paper discusses the fictional finishing school in Whom to Marry and How to Get Married (1848) by the Mayhew brothers, placing the novel in a broader literary and cultural context. A distinctive all-female space that both reflects and creates the values of the wider social world, the finishing school teaches its pupils about the realities of the marriage market and promotes attitudes such as snobbishness and skills such as dissemblance to ensure the girls’ success in the matrimonial race. Instruction is rigorous and rules are rigid; despite this fact, or precisely because of it, the girls contrive a small rebellion – a clandestine midnight feast that flouts the school’s most treasured precepts.
Key words: Henry and Augustus Mayhew, the Victorian marriage market, the Victorian finishing school, women’s education
