THE -Y OR THE TIGER?: EVOLVING VICTORIAN PERCEOTIONS OF EDUCATION AND THE PRiVATE RESIDENT GOVeRNESS Elizabeth Dana Rescher A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English The University of Toronto G Copyright by Elizabeth Dana Rescher, 1999 National Library Bibliothéque nationale 1*1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, nie W@lliigton OttawaON KlAON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/fïlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copy~@tin this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or othenvise de ceNe-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. TEE LADY OR THE TI-?: EVOLVING VfCTORlAW PERCEPTIONS OF EDUCATION MD TEE PRfVATE RESIDENT GOVBRNESS A thesis smrnitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English The University of Toronto by Elizabeth Dana Rescher, 1999 --Abattact-- From the first few decades of the nineteenth century to the 1860s, the governess-figure moved steadily in public estimation from embodiment of pathos to powerful subverter of order, only to revert in the last decades of the 1800s to earlier type. These changes were predicated, it was felt in the period, and often, afterwards, on the degree to which her skills were culturally relevant, especially to middle-class girls' needs, This study holds, however, that much of what was negative in Victorian views of the governess reflected a generalized dissatisfaction with education in the period, displaced ont0 a particularly vulnerable scapegoat. Meanwhile, in literature, the governess had long been a complex figure when she was an important character in a te:&. The nineteenth-century history of her literary representation thus describes a different parabola from that traced by other aspects of her image: she became a cornplicated and/or dangerous presence earlier, and stayed that way later in the century. This thesis explores some of the reasons for this with a view to showing how literary demands pressured the way her stereotype both weathered and accommodated itself in the translation to fictional construct. iii Table of Contents - - 1. The Private Resident Governess Defined . 1 2. The Nineteenth-Century Governess and the Middle Classes . 8 3. The Focus of this Study . 19 4. Existing Scholarship and this Study . 27 Chapter One: The Nineteenth Century Brings about a Change in Attitude toward Children 1. The Influence of Emile . 45 2. Children and Literature Early in the Nineteenth Century . 55 3. Children and Educational Concerns of the Period . 62 Chapter Two: Pity the Governess 1. The Stereotype . 76 2. Literary Governesses . 87 3. The Subgenre that Isn't One . 93 Chawter Three: Charlotte Brontë and Governessing . 103 Chapter Four: Jane Eyre . 137 Chapter Five: William Thackeray and Governessing . 200 Chapter Six: The Changing Educational Scene 1. The Four Educational Commissions . 210 2. Girls' Education. - 220 Chapter Seven: The Governess, the Law and the Sensacion Novel . 262 Conclusion . 310 Introduction 1. The Private Resident Governes8 Defined There are three kin& of people in the rorld: men, r-en, and governesses"' Indistinct terminology plagued governessing in its Victorian heyday and confuses Our understanding of governesses and their profession today. Jonathan Gathorne- Hardy's The Unnatural History of the Nanny tries to sort out one aspect of the problem by distinguishing the jurisdiction of the nanny, or "nursery governess," from that of the "governe~s~proper. Gathorne-Hardy observes that [i]n the nineteenth-century . as it became fashionable to have a governess[,] the nursery prefix would often get dropped. Where the charges are six or under and where her duties are not so much to instruct as to look after and "bring up" the children, . [the care-giver] is in effect aNanny. (21) In theory, not only were the nanny's duties different from those of a governess, but the woman who fuffilled them was herself different. Before straitened circumstances prompted educated, middle-class women like Charlotte Brontë to settle for the position rather than go without employment, nursery governesses generally came from the 'The Governess; or, Politics in Private Life 3. lower- or lower-middle classes. Their educational backgrounds, because of their class status, were often deficient. This was not a matter that concerned employers. While it is true that nannies often informally coached "their" children in useful basic knowledge--the alphabet, elementary reading skills, identification of numbers and their simplest properties--their dealings were only with young children at a basic level. The idea was that their charges would pass to others' care once they became old enough to profit from formal instruction. This is illustrated--1iterally--by the Victorian architect Robert Kerr, and described by him as well in his blueprint and explanatory comments about making occomodations for a seemly "School-room and Suite" in planning the layout of a manorhouse. The "School-room," Kerr explains, is "the name given to the apartment which is appropriated to two or three children withdrawn from the Nursery and placed under the care of a governess. ." He further spells out just how separate the governess's domain is to be from the nursery- governess 's: " [a] piace among the [adult family members' ] Bedrooms will almost always be appropriate. The Nurseries need not be further off than may otherwise be necessary" (91).' Because education was not the primary business of a nursery governess, employers cared more about their nannies' '~eealso Figure 22 on page 90 of Broughton and Symes. good health and spirits than about their academic proficiency or its lack, The primary requirement made of a nanny was chat she be robust and cneerful so she could adequately perform demanding caretaking responsibilities. On the other hand, the governess proper, whose transactions with older children required her to deal with more sophisticated charges than her nanny counterpart, usually came from the middle ranks of the middle classes and had received a lady's education. Employers expected her to be literate, have reading, writing and conversational skills in at least one foreign language, possess some academic learning (typically a stronger background in history and literature; a weaker one in mathematics and scientific knowledge) and one or more artistic "accomplishrnents" (ability to play an instrument, sing, work fine embroidery, paint, sketch, etc.). Additionally, she was relied on to demonsrrate a lofty regard for moral principles and genteel conduct in daily life and to encourage her pupils to do likewise. In practice, however, situations were far less clear- cut than was in theory the case. Insofar as professional duties are concerned, Gathorne-Hardy's division of the "nursery-governess" from the "governess" inadequately accounts for situations--cornmon ones--where a governess employed to teach older children was expected to "babysit" their younger siblings in the schoolroom while supervising 4 tne education of those who were formally her pupils, or to teach srnaller children the fundamentals of learning--the nursery-governessrs task in Gathorne-Hardy's classificatory system--while setting their older brothers and sisters more challenging lessons. As the experienced governess Mary Cowden-Clark recollected in her menoir, My Long Life, " [Fjour [pupilsj proved really to be five, for the youngest was oftener sent to the schoolroorn than kept in the nursery" (36). The class differences which supposedly set nannies and governesses apart proved similarly blurred. At mid-century, as I have mentioned, middle-class ladies took employment as nursery governesses out of economic necessity. Conversely, some lower-middle-class women sought to improve their status by acquiring the elements of what was considered a lady's education and then going out as governesses. The division ~ecweenwhat are ostensibly two sorts of teacher--nursery governesses and the governess prcper--, and between their job descriptions, was therefore a highly fluid one, however impermeable the Victorians and twentieth-century commentators alike have apparently wished it to be. Arnbiguous as the picture already looks, the blurred line of definition between the nursery governess and the governess is only one of a number of apparently solid demarcations with respect to the topic that shift and waver disconcertingly when subject to examination, To consider 5 governessing with relation to older children, as Gathorne- Hardy did the nursery governess's situation, is to find a 'rfycira's nest of problems improbably lodged in the Victorian schoolroom--problems overlooked by many twentieth-century çcholars writing on the history of middle-class women's education. The result is that much of what has been said ahout the governess remains less clear than Ft ought to be if the subject is to be represented as faithfully as possible. For a start, the term "governess," though often used witnout modifiers in the nineteenth century and almost invariably appearing this way in the twentieth, tells one little that is useful. First, it gives no due to the class of woman meant: we have seen already how the word could refer to the lower-middle-class woman who worked in the nursery. It could equally well identify a London banker's Paris-eàucated daughter who was employed to "finish," or put the final social polish on a pupil's education.