ScholarWorks@중앙대학교

초록

This paper first examines how a boarding school functions as a site for disciplining a female subject into a virtuous citizen of the early American Republic in Hannah Webster Foster's The Boarding School (1798). Composed of two parts, the first part of the book gives a detailed description of what should be taught to female students for them to play a virtuous role in society. In accordance with the cultural norms prescribed by the Republican Womanhood, the female students at a fictionalized boarding school superintended by Mrs. Williams, learn various subjects, such as reading, writing, arithmetic, music and dancing, only to serve better for the society by supporting and raising virtuous citizens as a wife and mother. Students also learn proper moral behaviors about various topics, such as dress code, polite behavior, filial and fraternal affection, friendship, love, and religion. Part Two shows the interchange of letters between Mrs. Williams and students, and among students themselves. On the one hand, this letter exchange process well illustrates how the students communicate with each other to consolidate and spread the dominant discourse indoctrinated at school even after they leave the school. Yet, on the other, this epistolatory interaction shows the formation of a strong bond among students, suggesting that there is a slight possibility of subversion in which this female friendship functions as a separate space for female autonomy and independence against dominant norms.

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