Vzdělání a výchova řemeslnických dcer v první polovině 19. století: možnosti výzkumu korespondence
Education of Artisans‘ Daughters in the 19th Century: Possibilities of Correspondence Research

Summary/Abstract: This article explores the correspondence, or writing skills, of provincial artisan families, that is to say, the lower middle-class families. Each letter is a direct evidence of author’s level of education. When compiled and analysed in a corpus of texts, these are valuable pointers to the educational level of the artisans as a social group. In general, the artisan families in the 19th century gave a high priority to the education of their children. Their underlying life strategy was that the means of family subsistence was based on the qualifications of the man and the father of the family. Thus, the sons were expected to receive an artisan training, complete their journeyman years (Wanderjahre), settle down and become master craftsmen. Here, the basic assumption was that they get married and start a family. But also, the daughters were expected to acquire and develop a set of certain skills during their childhood and adolescence. This fact is reflected in their personal correspondence which is used in this article both as a source of information for a content and as a language material for a formal stylistic analysis. The results show that the wives and daughters of artisans had typically a good knowledge of orthographic rules, politeness conventions and a good domain of stylistic elaboration and prove that letters can be a rich source for the research of the educational level of this social group.

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