WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 85 



And so it was with the most illustrious ladies of France. 

 Many of them were so devoid of instruction that they were 

 unable either to read or to write. Even the teachers in 

 Saint-Cyr were so deficient in the simplest rudiments of 

 an education that Mme. de Maintenon found it necessary 

 to correct their letters, in order to teach them the most 

 essential rules of epistolary correspondence. In reality, 

 the women of the age of Louis XIV did not trouble them- 

 selves about an education as we understand it. Endowed 

 with esprit, with a natural and acquired taste for things 

 intellectual, they were satisfied with such knowledge as 

 they could glean from reading or conversation, and with 

 comparatively few exceptions, showed no disposition to de- 

 vote long years to study in school, much less in a university, 

 as did their sisters to the south of the Alps. 



The foundress of Saint-Cyr had likewise been influenced 

 by her environment as well as by the court an environ- 

 ment which was becoming daily more and more unfavorable 

 to the education, especially anything approaching the high- 

 er education, of women. A young woman's education was 

 considered complete when she was able to read, write, dance 

 and play some musical instrument. Anything more was 

 deemed superfluous and deserving of censure and ridicule 

 rather than praise. 



It was at this time that Moliere's two celebrated plays, 

 Les Femmes Savantes and Les Precieuses Ridicules, were 

 given to the world. These well-known productions, replete 

 with the author 's brightest flashes of wit, and abounding in 

 his most effective shafts of satire, produced at once an im- 

 mense sensation. As soon as published, they were in the 

 hands of everybody. Those who were opposed to the edu- 

 cation of women and the number was daily increasing 



guage, when she writes: "J'ai cru que Votre Altesse seret Men e"se 

 de savoir sete istoire." Quoted by Eousselot in his Histoire d& 

 I'Education des Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 287. 



