“Be Guardian Angel of the National Spirit…” Women’s Virtues Recommended in Nineteenth‑Century Programmes of Education

Throughout the nineteenth century, Poland was deprived of an independent state, and the primary goal of Poles at that time, regardless of gender, was to regain independence. The specific historical conditions in which Polish society had to modernize in the period under discussion also left their mark on the process of women’s education, which is visible in contemporary curricula. In them, a special aura surrounded moral education and work for the oppressed homeland, in which women were to perform a unique function. The role that the family played in the process of shaping national awareness and defending Polishness against Germanization and Russification assigned to Polish women special tasks in society and additional fields of activity, increasing their prestige in the family and beyond. The situation in which Poles found themselves in the period in question largely influenced the model of educating the young generation of women. In it, moral, religious and patriotic education took a prominent place. In the comfort of the home, in boarding schools, and in schools, girls were supposed to learn the principles of faith, to learn to read and write in Polish, to count, to acquire a knowledge of the main points of geography, native history, and nature, to master the art of playing an instrument, to become familiar with household duties, to learn to sew, embroider and knit, etc. The direction of girls’ education was in a sense imposed by the tasks that the pupils had to fulfill in the future in the life of their family and in the life of society.

An educated woman was to become a defender of Christian faith and wisdom, a guardian of patriotism, a promoter of history, the purity of the Polish language and Polish customs, and above all, a good wife and mother. Moral values, based mainly on Christian ethics, were always to accompany her both in the home and in public. Specific Polish conditions permanently bound her to tradition and to the prevailing ideal of the Polish Mother, a symbolic model of the ideal wife and mother. In the name of the good of the homeland and in support of a man in the struggle for freedom, she was to renounce her own aspirations and desires, so that nothing distracted from the main goal – Poland’s regaining independence.