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The Victorian Governess
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.
Suffer and Be Still (Routledge Revivals)
First published in 1972, this book contains a collection of ten essays that document the feminine stereotypes that women fought against, and only partially erased, a hundred years ago. In an introductory essay, Martha Vicinus describes the perfect Victorian lady, showing that the ideal was a combination of sexual innocence, conspicuous consumption and worship of the family hearth. Indeed, this model in some form was the ideal of all classes as the perfect lady’s only functions were marriage and procreation. The text offers a valuable insight into Victorian culture and society.
The British Almanac
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