The Figure of the Governess, based on Ronald Pearsall's Night's Black Angels
The middle- and upper class fashion for educating girls at home created the phenomenon of
the governess. No employment category for women was more vulnerable. The governesses'
meagre educations fitted them for that particular role and no other. In the census of 1851 the
number of govemesses in Britain was reckoned at 21,000. The keynotes of the governess's
life were humiliation and the endurance of psychological cruelty (consider the treatment of
Norah Vanstone in Wilkie Collins's No Name). The definition of a governess, according to
The Quarterly Review, was a person "who is our equal in birth, manners and education, but
our inferior in worldly wealth. . . there is no other class which so cruelly requires its
members to be, in birth, mind, and manners, above their station, in order to fit them for their
station."
According to the novelists, daughters of ruined gentlemen commonly became govemesses,
tragic figures who strived to preserve their independence against all the odds, odd women
out, neither fish nor fowl. The situation of the governess was most pathetic because she had
not been brought up to expect to find herself in such sorry straights. Her wages could be as
low as eight pounds a year; in her last situation as a governess, for instance. Charlotte
Brontë received twenty pounds a year (actually only sixteen, since washing expenses were
deducted at the source).
The govemesses least to be envied were those who were forced to support someone else out
of the pittances they earned, for they often ended their lives "starved, worn out, blind,
paralytic, insane, after having educated nephews and nieces, put themselves out of the way
of marriage, resisted temptations of which no one but the desolate can comprehend the
force, and fought a novel fight." Because the supply of governesses was far greater than the
demand, many of the more desperate girls would do the job for nothing, just to get a roof
over their heads. Witness this advertisement from the 27 June 1845 edition of The Times:
Wanted, a Governess, on Handsome Terms. Governess -- a comfortable home, but without
salary, is offered to any lady wishing for a situation as governess in a gentleman's family
residing in the country, to instruct two little girls in music, drawing, and English; a thorough
knowledge of the French language is required.
The duties of a governess, especially one employed by a family of the commercial middle
class (which often delighted in degrading someone of superior "breeding"), were dreary and
disenchanting. As a special treat, the governess might be allowed to enter the parlour, but
she would take her meals in the schoolroom. The governess -- heroine of Anne Brontë's
Agnes Grey was forced to ride to church with her back to the horses, and she was ordered
when she walked with her pupils to keep a few steps behind them.
The children and servants of the house soon realized that the governess was fair game. To
almost any gentleman she was a "tabooed woman, to whom he is interdicted from granting
the usual privileges of the sex." Tradesmen, smarting from the snubs they customarily
received from their superiors, took revenge on governesses, a species of the upper classes
which providence had provided for their spite. To most governesses, the ritual of the Sunday
church service was a social agony.
The governess's charges would often torment her by refusing to do their lessons, throwing
her work-bag into the fire, or forcing her to take them out to the garden to play with them,
knowing full well that her lonely meal was getting cold. The larger children might even
assault their governess, and the more ambitious boys might try to harass her sexually.
Charlotte Brontë's years as a governess led to life-long embitterment:
None but those who had been in the position of a governess could ever realize that dark side
of 'respectable' human nature; under no great temptation to crime, but daily giving way to
selfishness and ill-temper, till its conduct toward those dependent on it sometimes amounts
to a tyranny of which one would rather be the victim than the inflictor.
When she was the famous authoress invited to tea at the home of novelist William
Makepeace Thackeray, Charlotte was so socially ill-at- ease that she took refuge with the
family's governess.
Not all employers were tyrants; not all of them burdened their govemesses with sewing,
housework, and errands, or refused to allow their relatives to visit them, or discouraged
unattached young men from making approaches. And not all governesses were necessarily
meek and lady-like. If the children's parents were amenable, the governess could terrorize
her charges with impunity. Lucy Lyttelton, later Lady Frederick Cavendish, had a governess
named Miss Nicholson who, she confided to her diary, "was over-severe and apt to whip me
for obstinacy when I was only dense." Miss Nicholson used to parade the young girl along
the sea front at Brighton with her hands tied behind her back!
Cruelty on the part of the governess was often a matter of self-protection, for a churlish
child reflected badly on her. It was also revenge for the quirk of fate that had put her in so
menial and inconvenient a role. Imaginative parents were wise to treat their governesses
with kindness, for the employers' cruelty could rebound on their own children. A sharp word
to an outwardly uncomplaining governess could result in four hours in a dark cupboard for a
small, sobbing child.
The social isolation of the governess bred loneliness and neurosis. The reformer Harriet
Martineau suggested that there should be an inquiry into the proportion of former
governesses among the inmates of lunatic asylums (her suspicion was correct: the
proportion was, in fact, quite high). Peculiar relationships could be built up between a
governess and her pupil, as explored by Henry James in The Turn of the Screw, and these
could have tragic outcomes for both instructor and instructed alike.
When one is aware that one is being subjugated, there is an additional cross to bear. The
tortured sensibilities of governesses made the callousness and cruelty with which they were
treated seem far worse than they actually were. On a pro rata basis, the practitioners of the
profession were never treated with the gross brutality which factory girls, apprentices, and
mine-workers habitually endured. Even the most obnoxious employer would have thought
twice before striking a governess!
However, the Victorian age was hardly devoid of good intentions, and there were moves to
render the lot of the governess more pleasant (or, at least, less burdensome). But with a
surplus of half-educated women and an absence of suitable occupations, the profession of
governess was always overcrowded. The aim of the governess was to start a school of her
own: the Brontes in real life tried and failed, but Miss Garth's sister in Collins's No Name
succeeded. Even in fiction, however, failures generally outnumbered successes.
The downtrodden members of the profession took their first step towards improved working
conditions by founding the Governesses' Benevolent Association in 1841; in 1846 it opened
a home in Haricy Street out of which its members could work. It established a system of
annuities for governesses too old to work, so that by the end of 1847 four annuities of fifteen
pounds each had been secured; unfortunately, there were ninety candidates for these. As the
century drew on, there were further opportunities for well-bred girls in other occupations,
and some of the social and economic pressures were relieved. But being a governess was
never a sinecure. A starving old age was an ever-present spectre for her. It may be argued
that governesses entered a state of subjugation willingly, that they could have chosen to earn
a living by sewing shirts or making hats instead. However, many grasped at the simulacrum
of well-bred living, and accepted the indignities their positions entailed. Few could blame
them. Education without attendant opportunities still has its victims today. [45-48]
The Governess and Class Prejudice
Brontë, by choosing the profession of governess for Jane, allowed her audience to see life
from both the servant's point of view and the aristocracy's point of view by means of a
critical, cultured, and articulate character. The uncertain social status of governesses made
the role a difficult one as the following historical description points out:
The governess in the nineteenth century personified a life of intense misery. She was also
that most unfortunate individual; the single, middle-class woman who had to earn her own
living. Although being a governess might be a degradation, employing one was a sign of
culture and means. . . . The psychological situation of the governess made her position
unenviable. Her presence created practical difficulties within the Victorian home because
she was neither a servant nor a member of the family. She was from the social level of the
family, but the fact that she was paid a salary put her at the economic level of the servants.
(Bonnie G. Smith, "Chapter 5: The Domestic Sphere in the Victorian Age," Changing
Lives]
Only the salary of the governess and her usually low family position keeps her from being
considered part of the culturally elite. The same holds true for the tradesman from Gaskell's
North and South. They do not lack potential or intellect anymore than the aristocracy does.
Brontë and Gaskell successfully break down the barriers and prove what people from the
lower classes can possibly achieve.
Chapter 4. The Woman as Professional Educator — The Governess
It would appear that governesses began to people the pages of domestic fiction chiefly
because there were so many of them in real life. Patricia Thomson, in The Victorian
Heroine, A Changing Ideal, 1837-1873, suggests the following causes for the emergence of
the governess as a Victorian institution: 2 The bank failures of the thirties resulted in a large
class of the genteel poor, whose daughters had few acceptable avenues of financial support
open to them. At the same time, the newly wealthy middle-class families were seeking a
higher standard of education for their daughters. Given the incapacity of those rising in the
social scale to educate their own children and their distrust of "masculine intervention,"
added to the tradition that young ladies' matrimonial opportunities increased in proportion to
their "accomplishments, " the demand for governesses reached an unprecedented high. The
governess became a popular character in fiction, Thomson further suggests, because the
depiction of an "impoverished" and "unprotected" but "intelligent" young woman could be
depended upon to evoke a stock emotional response which would guarantee large sales
among the sentimental. For those authors and readers who preferred submissive women, the
fact that the governesses' occupation usually stemmed from economic necessity and not
from choice absolved her from "any suspicion of strong-mindedness in earning her living"
(Thomson, p. 39).
The governess proved, despite the stereotyped responses her plight might call forth, an
infinitely plastic figure, easily malleable to the purposes of any given author. That these
purposes were often, didactic is to be expected from the general character of the English
novel of this period. "All true histories contain instruction, " wrote Anne Brontë's Agnes
Grey at the beginning other narrative. Lady Amberley must have agreed, for she wrote in
her diary of 1868 that she had "read Agnes Grey . . . and should like to give it to every
family with a governess and shall read it through again when I have a governess to remind
me to be human."3
In Victorian fiction, the genus "governess" may be divided into two classes: (1) the meek
and submissive; (2) the independent and rebellious. Class one, by far the larger in the early
years, was made up almost exclusively of virtuous types; class two governesses might be
either highly moral or of questionable character.