A Historical View of the Victorian Governess Essay

During the nineteenth century, women had few rights, and were often objectified by men. An ideal woman was subservient to her husband, had plenty of children, and was not expected to work outside the home. As the Victorian era progressed, some women

Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes reveals the struggles women had in the 17th-18th centuries when it came to equal education opportunities. Women were expected to become people of domestication while men had many opportunities to expand their minds and be ambitious, and be leaders. Women were expected to focus on taking care of their family, not to have minds of their own. They wanted change.

Raised in a single parent household, Ellis developed a strong sense of morals regarding home life. Having helped raise her siblings, we can infer that this influenced her belief in the importance of women in a matriarchal role. Ellis writes of the necessity to be educated properly, stating that school education ‘forms but a very small part of that which they will be expected to possess’. This statement can be reinforced from the Victorian notion that a woman of the upper or middle class, though did receive an education, were expected to become accomplished as opposed to academically knowledgeable. , thus Ellis’s writings can be regarded as typical of the time.

The Victorian Era women was vastly different than the female we think of nowadays. Women during that time were expected to fulfill more of a domestic and motherly role, one that stayed at home and took care of the house. They were confined within the private sphere of the world while the men toiled away in the public sphere. The ideal Victorian women was described as:

However, the times were changing in that women were allowed to start getting an education, the intent being they would be raising young men and needed to make sure they were educated, but it became so much more. An article written by the National Women’s History Museum pointed out the need to educating women and adolescents: “Another changing trend was that many of America’s youth began choosing their own spouses based on romance and companionship. In response to this transformation parents felt their girls should receive an education that would make them more attractive to well-bred husbands. Education was also regarded as beneficial for those women who had the misfortune to marry less reliable men, in which case they would be more capable of educating their own children and managing the family’s business affairs. Thomas Jefferson cited this very reason for educating his daughter, Martha Jefferson, saying: “The chance that in marriage she will draw a blockhead I calculate at about fourteen to one, and…the education of her family will probably rest on her own ideas and directions without assistance.” (Collins, 2003) Jefferson’s prediction was right. Martha Jefferson had twelve children and her husband was said to have become mentally ill later in life, leaving Martha Jefferson with a lot of responsibility.” (NWHM, 2007)

Jeannette’s mother, Rose Mary Walls, is a greedy and egotistical woman who is unfit to be a mother. Jeannette often times is

“The subject of the Education of Women of the higher classes is one which has undergone singular fluctuations in public opinions” (Cobbe 79). Women have overcome tremendous obstacles throughout their lifetime, why should higher education stand in their way? In Frances Power Cobbe’s essay “The Education of Women,” she describes how poor women, single women, and childless wives, deserve to share a part of the human happiness. Women are in grave need of further improvements in their given condition. Cobbe suggests that a way to progress these improvements manifests in higher education, and that this will help further steps in advance. Cobbe goes on to say that the happiest home, most grateful husband, and the most devoted children came from a woman, Mary Sommerville, who surpassed men in science, and is still studying the wonders of God’s creations. Cobbe has many examples within her paper that shows the progression of women as a good thing, and how women still fulfill their duties despite the fact that they are educated. The acceptance of women will be allowed at the University of New England because women should be able to embrace their abilities and further their education for the benefit of their household, their lives, and their country.

In the early nineteenth century, women were expected to be, “‘angels in the house,’ loving, self-sacrificing, and chaste wives, mothers and daughters or they are… ultimately doomed” (King et al. 23). Women of this time were supposed to be domestic creatures and not tap so far into their intellectual abilities (King et al.). The role of women in the nineteenth century is described:

Updike further accentuates this class system through the characterization of Queenie and his description of her walking through the A&P, “as if she didn’t walk in her bare feet that much” (Updike 17), with a “prim face” (Updike 17) and obvious air of elegance. Queenie’s authority in her statement, “We are decent”, her lower lip

Education was not equal between the sexes and neither between the classes. Gentlemen were educated at home until they were old enough to attend well-known or lesser schools. A lady’s schooling was

the house and abandon her illusion of aristocracy. This only adds to her misery until her young niece,

James’ use of “man” in contrast to “girl” gives a feeling of superiority of the employer in both age and wealth, and an impression of the girl’s crush towards him. The governess bases all of this off of their first and only encounter. Due to the difference in social class, perhaps “it is her master’s curiously absent status, coupled with [her] unrequited love for him, that drives [her] to her hallucinations” (Pouquette 257). As the saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder, but in this case, it drives the governess to become deranged and captivated by her ghosts and their affair.

In the Victorian era, the status of women in society was extremely oppressive and, by modern standards, atrocious. Women had few rights, in or outside of the home. Married women in this period relied on men almost completely as they had few rights or independence. With this mindset in focus,

Despite being under the rule of a female monarch, women faced many inequalities and suffering during the Victorian age. Examples of these inequalities include not having the right to vote, unequal educational and employment opportunities. Women were even denied the legal right to divorce in most cases. As the Norton Anthology states, these debates over women’s rights and their roles came to be known as the “woman question” by the Victorians. This lead to many conflicting struggles, such as the desire by all for women to be educated, yet they are denied the same opportunities afforded to men. While these women faced these difficulties, there was also the notion that women should be domestic and feminine. There was an ideal that women should be submissive and pure because they are naturally different. The industrial revolution introduced women into the labor workforce, but there was still a conflict between the two identities; one of an employed woman, and one of a domestic housewife.

great prosperity in Great Britain's literature. The Victorian Age produced a variety of changes. Political and social reform produced a variety of reading among all classes. The lower-class became more self-conscious, the middle class more powerful and the rich became more vulnerable. The novels of Charles Dickens, the poems of Alfred,