page_title: Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon
section_title: Educational influence
hierarchical_section_title: Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon / Educational influence
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Règlement de collège. Éducation des filles. Institut Sait-Louis de Saint-Cyr, début XVIIIe sicle. Règne de Louis XIV.
context_page_description: Françoise d'Aubigné, known first as Madame Scarron and subsequently as Madame de Maintenon, was a French noblewoman who secretly married King Louis XIV. Although she was never considered queen of France, she was one of the King's closest advisers and the royal children's governess. In 1684, she founded the Maison royale de Saint-Louis, a school for girls from poorer noble families.
context_section_description: Madame de Maintenon founded the Maison royale de Saint-Louis, a school for girls of impoverished noble families, who were becoming increasingly numerous because many provincial noblemen died in wars or expended their fortunes in the King's service. The school began at Rueil and moved to Noisy-le-Roi until the King endowed Saint-Cyr, a village 5 km west of Versailles, at her request by using the funds of the Abbey of St. Denis. According to her wishes, the education would be different from that traditionally practiced in convents, where education was minimal and principally centred on religion: her students were educated to be ladies of the nobility, receiving an education that was severe but showed proof of the era's modernity. Madame de Maintenon was considered a born teacher and a friendly, motherly influence on her pupils, who included Dauphine Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy.
  Madame de Maintenon drew up the rules of the institution and attended to every detail. The school buildings housed 250 students, cared for by 36 lay female educators or "professes", 24 "converses" sisters carrying out domestic tasks, and some priests. The students, aged 7 to 20, were divided by their uniform color: red for 7 to 10 years old; green for 11 to 14; yellow for 15–16; blue for 17–20, and black for the most talented and disciplined from the "blues". Each class had a timetable appropriate to its students' age: the "reds" learned arithmetic, geometry, reading and writing, along with receiving the rudiments of Catechism, Latin, and religious history; the "greens" continued in these subjects, along with geography and history; the "yellows" also learned drawing and dancing; the "blues" were initiated into heraldry, the history of the Catholic Church and more detailed teaching in morality; and the blacks were in charge of helping the teachers in classes, accounts, hospital, refectory, and sewing clothes for their fellow students or the teachers. Leisure time was also important for Maintenon, who encouraged the students to play intellectual games such as chess and checkers, though card games were banned. She asked Jean Racine to write Esther and Athalie for the girls at Saint-Cyr.
  Maison royale de Saint-Louis is considered to have greatly influenced the demands of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, the first women political interest group founded in 1793. Their successful attempt to link gender equality through the educational system's reformation and the enforcement of the 1724 royal ordinance that imposed compulsory universal primary education, were inspired from the 17th century treatises by Madame de Maintenon and François Fénelon. In the Revolutionary context, Madame de Maintenon's ideas were used by local officials and philanthropists who successfully established neighborhood primary schools that accepted many young poor girls. Her work had a lasting impact on the original feminist movement, which gathered in Parisian salons and during the Age of Enlightenment, one aim of which was to promote educational equality between sexes to both improve society with more capable workers and help lower-class women escape their condition and prostitution.
caption: Rules of the Maison Royale de Saint-Louis.
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