The ambivalence of the traditional female role repertoire and the emergence of reformist aspirations in István Gyertyánffy’s 19th-century works

Abstract

"... And they make of the poor girl: a graceful, coquettish, empty-headed parrot..." - The ambivalence of the traditional female role repertoire and the emergence of reformist aspirations in István Gyertyánffy's 19th-century works.

The rise of the culture of memory in the last decade has led to a need for a new, more complex approach to pedagogical research. Like historians and other researchers, the author believes examining the culture of different eras as a historical category in its value-preserving and value-bearing specificities are vital. One of the author's research goals in recent years has been to produce a modern narrative of the history of education by István Gyertyánffy (1834 - 1930). The micro-historical methodology became evident almost immediately when primary documents related to the pedagogue were discovered in the Manuscript Archives of the National Széchényi Library. This time, the paper focuses on the early ideas of the national educator on women's education - from the last third of the 19th century - within the framework of pedagogical research. In our opinion, Gyertyánffy's educational statements were a niche in his time, even if they sometimes contain outdated views for today's readers. His ideas are worth exploring in the context of domestic aspirations and movements at the turn of the century and reveal through micro-historical analysis what foreign and domestic figures, and international and domestic currents, influenced the educator.