In mid-19th century United States, the education of young women was focused on developing virtues such as piety, modesty, subservience, and gentleness. French, drawing, dancing and music were also common in the curriculum. It was an education aimed at preparing young ladies for motherhood, and education that, according to Bishop John England of Charleston, SC., "was precisely the type of education that prepared young ladies for heaven."

However, religious women, who had already estamblish over one hundred academies for young ladies,  began to introduce science, Latin, and mathmatics, what were known as "the masculine branches of learning," into the curriculum of their schools for young women.