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The Victorian Governess | 
 enlarge | Author: Kathryn Hughes
Publisher: Hambledon & London
Category: Book
List Price: $60.00
Buy New: $56.00
You Save: $4.00 (7%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1886689
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 278
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 1852850027
Dewey Decimal Number: 371.10094109034
EAN: 9781852850029
ASIN: 1852850027
Publication Date: August 2, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Delivery is usually 5 - 8 working days from order, International is by Royal Mail Airmail
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The figure of the governess is very familiar from nineteenth-century literature. Much less is known about the governess in reality. This book is the first rounded exploration of what the life of the home schoolroom was actually like. Drawing on original diaries and a variety of previously undiscovered sources, Kathryn Hughes describes why the period 1840-80 was the classic age of governesses. She examines their numbers, recruitment, teaching methods, social position and prospects.
The governess provides a key to the central Victorian concept of the lady. Her education consisted of a series of accomplishments designed to attract a husband able to keep her in the style to which she had become accustomed from birth. Becoming a governess was the only acceptable way of earning money open to a lady whose family could not support her in leisure.
Being paid to educate another woman's children set in play a series of social and emotional tensions. The governess was a surrogate mother, who was herself childless, a young woman whose marriage prospects were restricted, and a family member who was sometimes mistaken for a servant.
Book Description
The figure of the governess is very familiar from nineteenth-century literature. Much less is known about the governess in reality. This book is the first rounded exploration of what the life of the home schoolroom was actually like. Drawing on original diaries and a variety of previously undiscovered sources, Kathryn Hughes describes why the period 1840-80 was the classic age of governesses. She examines their numbers, recruitment, teaching methods, social position and prospects.
The governess provides a key to the central Victorian concept of the lady. Her education consisted of a series of accomplishments designed to attract a husband able to keep her in the style to which she had become accustomed from birth. Becoming a governess was the only acceptable way of earning money open to a lady whose family could not support her in leisure.
Being paid to educate another woman's children set in play a series of social and emotional tensions. The governess was a surrogate mother, who was herself childless, a young woman whose marriage prospects were restricted, and a family member who was sometimes mistaken for a servant.
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| Customer Reviews:
Caste, Cliche, and Controversy in The Victorian Governess July 20, 2006
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I've always been interested in the role of women in history, and most of all, just what did women do. Most books on the roles of women in history tend to focus on women who were rulers, or women that were rebellious and refused to fit in, and only recently has those women in the less noticable areas of life have been being noticed.
Kathryn Hughes' The Victorian Governess takes a good look at the reality of one of fiction's most beloved characters -- the Governess. Using both historical records and memoirs as well as the works of fiction, Hughes' work explores the reasons why women -- and just what sort of women -- would go into the homes of the elite and middle class to teach other young women for deplorable pay, rotten working conditions, and the other unsavory delights of home teaching. I found it to be a fascinating study, and far far different than what I had expected. After all, I had read those two classics from Victorian literature that featured governesses as main characters -- Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Bronte's Jane Eyre, and to me, it seemed that governesses may have had a few rough moments, but they usually ended up marrying well, and teaching was not much more than a momentary blip on way to the ideal Victorian notion of womanhood.
Beginning with just who became governesses and why, I found my preconceptions shattered early on. Often born into gentry and middle class families, the governess was expected to be a lady -- namely, she was to be well-spoken, and well-mannered, genteel, and possessed of such skills as the basics of reading, writing and arithmatic, and if she could speak foreign languages well, or make music, her marketability soared. But, she was also expected to be above such matters as 'trade' -- that is, making money -- as well as being a bastion of morality and the rigid social codes of the time. She wasn't a servant, exactly, but neither was she a member of the upper classes either, and existed in a no-man's-land in the families that she toiled in. Worst still, the numbers of governesses looking for work always outstripped the available positions. Unable to be provided for by their own families either through circumstances, bad management, or ill-luck, and constrained by a society that expected them to never be able to negotiate a fair salary, the governess was caught in a vicious cycle that was one step above poverty. And even having a position was not necessarily a promise of security either -- some employers dismissed a governess when her charges left the schoolroom, or when they left the country, or if there was any hint of a scandal. Or a governess could leave employment if her health broke down, a better offer came along, or very rarely, if she married.
While governesses continued to be employed by the start of World War I, another factor was arising that would end the system. More public schools were being founded and funded, and many women from the working classes made the shift from being maidservants and factory workers to the far more satisfactory jobs of office workers and schoolteachers. All in all, by 1914, there had been more than 25,000 women working as governesses in Great Britain.
I found this to be a fascinating look into the world of upper and middle class women. What was interesting was that the governesses were the first women of the 'respectable' clases to find a measure of independence and financial stability on their own. While it was certainly a hard life, for a few women it could be emotionally rewarding. Some women were able to forge ties with families and students that lasted for the rest of their lives. While the governess has come down to modern day moviegoers and readers as a romantic figure -- just look at how many versions of Jane Eyre there are in film -- the reality was something quite different.
The only part of the book that I didn't much care for was the overuse of the memoirs and diaries of the Bronte sisters -- especially Charlotte. These entries are particularly tiresome, full of whining and misery, and while it was accurate, it also made the reading a chore in spots.
Still, for anyone interested in social culture and the lives of ordinary women, this is worth the effort to find. It's full of interesting ancedotes and glimpses of a lost way of life. In addition to an introduction and epilogue, there are extensive notes and bibliography, as well as an insert of black and white photos and several line drawings. Two appendices break down the statistical data as well.
Kathryn Hughes has also written a biography of George Eliot, and the recently published The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton.
Recommended.
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