Boarding School Education

This satirical print, "Boarding School Education, or the Frenchified Young Lady" was meant to criticize the fashionable female education which was becoming popular with aristocratic British women in the late 18th century. It depicts an affluently dressed young woman dancing to her dancing master’s violin, while her overweight mother, dressed in an outlandishly large wig, looks on in approval. In the foreground a monkey plays a sword as a violin, and a dog dances on its hind legs. This mockery was meant to dismiss female education as frivolous and foreign; however, the number of wealthy white women who attended boarding schools continued to rise.