So I'm reading a romance novel (I know, I know, not the best source of historically accurate material, but I try to avoid the more blatantly inaccurate ones) and one character plays a prominent part. Something about this is bothering me, and my own knowledge and attempts to answer it myself haven't been very helpful.
She is the daughter of a Lord and Lady who, though greatly in debt, still keep at least one house and staff. They are not top-tier members of society but still attend various functions and mingle with others of high social standing. The thing is, she is supposedly completely illiterate, and from the description, it sounds like the author is trying to say that she has a learning disorder, which I assume was not even a concept at the time. Other characters remark how she will never be able to keep a household if she cannot read. Apparently the family just 'gave up' trying to teacher her when she couldn't get it easily.
Exactly how common was this? I suppose I'm used to seeing depictions of this time period from authors like Austen (okay, entirely Austen), and there aren't any Austen characters I can think of who were illiterate, even though most of them were of comparatively modest means.
Exactly how common was this? I suppose I'm used to seeing depictions of this time period from authors like Austen (okay, entirely Austen), and there aren't any Austen characters I can think of who were illiterate, even though most of them were of comparatively modest means.
Actually, most of Austen's characters are NOT of "modest means". They think of themselves that way, because they are comparing themselves to the actual nobility, but most of Austen's characters are members of the rural gentry -- they are firmly in the category of "upper-class", even if they are towards the bottom end of the 1%.
I'm not terribly familiar with the current scholarship on female literacy in Regency-era England. My impression, from having read some papers by Dr. Heidi Brayman Hackel, a few years ago, is that partial to total literacy in English (but not Latin or other foreign languages) was considered normal among upper-class women, but there were still many middle-class and working-class women who were functionally illiterate, even in 1800. My impression from period sources is that a upper-class woman who didn't know how to read at all would have been seen by her family and peers as "flighty" (aka ditzy) but not as fundamentally stupid. Upper-class and middle-class women were expected to have a small degree of literacy, but really just enough to be able to write short letters to friends and relatives or keep a ledger -- the production of "real literature" was stereotypically seen as firmly in the realm of upper-class men, even though there were elite women producing written works, as early as the 1740s, maybe even earlier. That said, it was estimated that there was about a overall (male & female) literacy rate of about 50%, in urban areas in Britain and France, in 1800. That said, about 80-90% of the population were still rural-dwellers, among whom literacy rates were generally quite low, except for nobility or other elites.
Overall, in the period 1760-1800, for the daughter of English nobility (as opposed to gentry) to be genuinely illiterate, would be unusual, but not impossible.