'“All pent up together”: representations of friendship in fictions of girls’ boarding schools, 1680-1800'

Studies of female education have emphasised the contexts of criticism and anxiety which surrounded girls’ boarding schools in the eighteenth century. Histories of education, however, have not considered fictional representations of these schools which, as the century progressed, suggest an increasing acceptance of the schools and offer striking defences of the importance and significance of female friendship. This essay sketches a history of representations of girls’ schools across the period 1680-1800 in order to show this development and to position Sarah Fielding’s The Governess as a key influence in this history.