‘An Education’: Carey Mulligan and girls’ schools

A parent of a girl at my school said to me a few weeks ago that the Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning 2009 film ‘An Education’, starring Carey Mulligan, should be compulsory viewing for all teenage girls, and now that I have (finally) seen it, I entirely agree. The film takes us on the journey of a highly intelligent girl, destined for Oxford, who feels that there is more to life than ‘dead’ study, and is seduced into a seemingly richer, more life-affirming existence, only to discover – the hard way – that it is little more than smoke and mirrors, and there is value to hard work after all.

The message is of course the right one – keep working hard, beware the easy path etc … just the sort of thing of which you would expect a Headmistress to approve. But what interested me too was the attitude towards girls and women which the film reflected, and which was entirely believable as a historical portrayal. Jenny’s father was determined that she should go to Oxford … but only, it emerges, so that she can marry a better match; Jenny’s mother, an understated role which reflects her subservience in the family hierarchy, reveals in one ascerbic comment to her husband that ‘she did have a life before she was married’; and the girls’ school which Jenny attends is portrayed as dry, repressed and hide-bound by rules – so much so that the Headmistress, played by the redoubtable Emma Thompson – refuses to give Jenny a second chance.

Carey Mulligan herself attended a girls’ school, and it was the making of her. She is quoted elsewhere as saying: “I had wanted to act for a really long time, but other schools I had been to did not have such good drama departments. Everyone was so encouraging. You could do anything you wanted to, although you had to take it seriously.’ This is what I personally recognise in girls’ schools today – this sense of limitless possibility and total encouragement of the individual. They are incredible places – and I make no secret of my enthusiasm.

Still, it is interesting how much prejudice remains about girls’ schools – how much people still imagine them to be ‘dry’ or ‘repressed’. To what extent is this a sign of the dying embers of the inherent sexism that has marked our education system over the centuries, with the education of boys and sons valued much more highly than that of girls and daughters? There is a very high likelihood that it is. What we must remember is not to take such prejudices at face value, and challenge them when we encounter them. Girls’ schools are amazing, and I am very proud indeed of mine.

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