Date of Award
5-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
College/School
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department/Program
English
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Steffi Dippold
Committee Member
Jeremy Lopez
Committee Member
Lucia McMahon
Abstract
Born in 1877, Rose McDonough grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. She learned French in a local school inside a Congregational Church, and by 1920 was a private teacher. This thesis recovers information about Rose McDonough’s life through a single archival object: Easy Conversations In French, by Gustave Choquet and published by New York’s George R. Lockwood & Son, in 1854. Housed in the Montclair History Center, Rose’s penciled marginalia is scattered throughout. Using book history as the primary methodology, this thesis reads the material object of the schoolbook, marks left by its reader, along with Census records, historic maps, and nineteenth century newspapers to reconstruct a life in the educational world. This book not only shows what the French curriculum looked like in the mid nineteenth century, Lockwood press became a lens for understanding how New York publishing shaped the educational access to working class Americans. Focusing on the issues in women’s education during the mid nineteenth century, shows what systematic and curricular disparities they faced. In order to further understand foundational United States educational history. With the ongoing discussion of the history regarding women’s education in the United States, this thesis provides another example of a woman who was impacted by the education system. This thesis situates the textbook within the broader debate of its era, from the female academy movement of the 1780s through the Common School reforms of the 1850s. Activists such as Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Catherine Beecher simultaneously expanded and constrained women’s access to knowledge. This thesis traces the fundamental problem with women’s education in the nineteenth century from schools across New Jersey to the curriculum and textbooks that were utilized. From writing, to publishing through into the classroom. Rose McDonough’s schoolbook is not simply a curiosity but a richly layered historical document.
File Format
Recommended Citation
Jackson, Rebecca Bienskie, "Conversation Made 'Easy' In the Classroom: The Problem With Women's Education in Nineteenth Century New Jersey" (2026). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1640.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1640