Celibacy for Female Teachers

Cultural Phenomenom of the 19th Century

Abstract

Celibacy for female teachers was introduced in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia in 1888. By passing a school law, the monarchical legislation was aligned with the prevailing Western legislation that prevented the employment of married female teachers and imposed, on employed teachers, the choice between marriage and profession. Public debates conducted around it were focused on several questions: whether the professionalization of women can be harmonized with the so-called natural female tendencies towards the sphere of household; what the social and economic effects of married female teachers’ work are; and what the moral implications of introducing female sexuality into the public sphere are, such as, for example, whether it is appropriate to have pregnant teachers in the classroom. The questions raised in these discussions and the general need for such legalization of women’s work are observed in the article together with the key tendencies that characterized the 19th century: modernization and nationalization of Croatian society, the rise of the discourse on modern motherhood (especially in pedagogical, didactic, and journalistic discourse and literature, which shifts the interest in motherhood to the character of the teacher, giving a high moral and didactic value to the literary representation of that literary figure), and the advocacy of the emancipation of women.