The history of women education has been structured by two powerful narratives. The first of these is the tale of the separation of the spheres and the second is the application of the cult of true womanhood to understand women place in the early 19th century. The purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyse the educational ideal for upperclass women in Sweden. By applying an unconventional source material, namely the Swedish lifestyle magazine Magasin för konst, nyheter och moder, a new narrative emerge. The previous research into the topic has mainly used the concepts of the separate spheres and the cult of true womanhood to explain the cultural paradigm that occurred to the hierarchy of genders during the early 19th century. This thesis aims to test if these concepts also can be applied on the previously mentioned source material, and still be viable. This thesis purpose that the previously named historical narratives can not be applied as strictly as it was previously believed. This paper critically reviews the level of education that Magasin för konst, nyheter och moder expected from its female readers, and hope that through this critical review a debate on the topic will emerge.

The American Civil War is often framed as exclusively masculine, consisting of soldiers, god-like generals, and battle; a sphere where women simply did not enter or coexist. This perception is largely due to the mobilization of approximately six million men, coupled with the Victorian era which did not permit women to engage in the public sphere. Women are given their place however, but it is more narrowly defined as home front assistance. Even as women transitioned from passive receivers to active participants, their efforts rarely defied gender norms. This thesis looks at Confederate female camp followers who appeared to defy societal conventions by entering the male dominated camps and blurred the lines between men and women’s proper spheres. While camp followers could be expanded to include women of the lower class, including black women, laborers, slaves and prostitutes, only middle and upper class white women are analyzed because they were the ones required to maintain respectability. More specifically, I analyze unmarried women, female soldiers, bereaved women and nurses. Barbara Welter articulated and labeled the concept of public versus private spheres, plus the attributes necessary to achieve respectability as the Cult of True Womanhood. The Cult of True Womanhood demanded that women be pious, pure, and submissive within the domestic sphere. It is with this foundation that the camp followers can be analyzed. Their actions appeared to break with the Cult of True Womanhood, but when they explained in memoirs, newspaper accounts, and journals why they entered the camps, they framed their responses in a way that allowed them to appear to conform to the cult.