The Strict Governess

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Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret were taught at home by a governess but their children and grandchildren attended school. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. The year 1847 marked the arrival of the governess at the very heart of the English novel where a middle-class woman employed to teach the daughters of those better off than herself appeared as the central character in a major work. After all, her power stemmed not merely from mere seniority of years but from her unquestioned position of authority. The title 'The Governess' paints a different picture to each one of us, and i for one enjoy taking her on a journey in my mind, that tickles my 'fancy'.

In the companion painting, Venus then watched over the group as they danced and kissed and cast themselves to the ground, intimately entwined… Red-faced, Edward looked away. Blankly he watched the footmen carry his trunk and bags down the red-wallpapered hall back toward his own rooms.First we have Becky Sharpe in William Thackeray's Vanity Fair; and later that same year was published Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. For example, it is doubtful that the following extract published in the December 1868 edition was sent in by 'a loving mother'.

Her sooty eyebrows were elegant and yet curiously emotionless, while the dark orbs above which they arched gleamed mysteriously. I actually knew a real-life governess who fitted the descriptions - raised in an institution as an orphan, sent "into service" and eventually rose to look after the children of a household, but in the last century not the Victoria era!During the 1840s and 1850s a range of periodicals of the time touched on the plight of the governess, which was described as a combination of low pay and poor working conditions. Yet from the closed and shuttered chambers of the redwallpapered mansions of the most respectable families, through the fogshrouded back alleys of soot and grime and sin, to the sweetsmelling haze of languorous opium dens, Edward soon realizes that before being taken in hand by the merciless Miss Violetta, he had not really even suspected the true meaning of discipline…nor of utter and abject submission. Could it be attributed to the way in which the governess has been portrayed in fiction and film - as a stereotype of a generally impoverished woman, neither servant nor family member, yet who constantly emerges as the heroine, often escaping a prim middle-age by marrying the local curate or the master of the house? After a very slight delay, the door was unlocked, and my governess received me with expressions of great tenderness, kissed her poor Lucille, and hoped my poor bottom was not too sore. She moistened her lips, and then continued softly, “When your governess gives a command, young sir, it had best be obeyed.