Women's Education of the Time

In my edition of Adeline Mowbray, there are some added essays to further explain some of the customs of England at the time. The education of women was a huge topic of debate in the 1790s. In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau published Emile which suggested that children should be educated based on their natural talents, which actually meant gender roles. Early proponents of women's rights understandably objected to this education saying it would make women almost useless. When girls only learned how to attract a mate, what would they do when they are actually married? In that late eighteenth century, women mainly had to be educated by using their brothers' tutors. They were mainly taught about music and art, French or Italian instead of Latin or Greek, and  religion.Women were beginning to learn science through botany, but many people still thought this was "too sexual for proper ladies". Throughout this period, many feminists, including Mary Wollstonecraft, argued that many "feminine" traits such as illogical thinking and frivolous concern with dress and self-decoration, were actually effects of inferior education. She published a novel on how women should learn botany to understand biology, but it faced a lot of criticism.