“Parents may wonder to taste the spring bitter
when they themselves have spoiled the fountain.”
(Buffum, 1826, p. 18)
Buffum drew on this Lockean dictum as a basis for his advice to mothers in Hints for the Improvement of Early Education. He established mothers as those naturally responsible for their children’s moral education, a practice embedded in the performance of intensive mothering. He exhorted:
No human being has so much power to preserve this primeval image of heaven in the soul as the mother. Peculiarly susceptible of religious emotion herself, she can communicate it more effectually than any other instructer (sic). The lessons she teaches will never be forgotten. …[T]he prayers, that are said around her knees, will be instinctively murmured by the lips of extreme age. (p. 121)
In Letters to Mothers, Sigourney (1838) similarly invoked Locke’s notion
of Tabula Rasa to warn: “Amid this happiness, who can refrain from trembling
at the thought, that every action, every word, even every modification of voice
or feature, may impress on the mental tablet of the pupil, traces that shall
exist forever”
(p. 34). While such advice had no doubt the intent of regulating
mothers’ interactions with their children in a society concerned with
moral purity and perfection, mothers of all classes enjoyed heightened status
amidst the public interest in the “science and art”
of early education
(Buffum, 1826. p. 5). Indeed, the mother-as-teacher was now conferred, at least
within the domestic sphere, with “the highest of powers”
:
What a scope for your exertions, to render your representative, an honour to its parentage, and a blessing to its country. You have gained an increase of power. The influence which is most truly valuable, is that of mind over mind. How entire and perfect is this dominion, over the unformed character of your infant. Write what you will, upon the print-less tablet, with your wand of love. (Sigourney, 1838, p. 12)
These Lockean concepts resonated in Victorian social mores and gender ideals. For example, Victorian bio-medical theories held that women were by virtue of their biological constitution more emotional, and thus intellectually and emotionally closer to the minds of children. This underpinned the ideal of the mother as teacher of literacy as an innocent and benign Madonna-like figure. Kate Flint (1993) suggested a close relationship between bio-medical theories of gender and reading advice to Victorian women: