Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres

by Ruth Brandon

Book Overview

The rise and fall of the English governess, the domestic heroine who inspired Victorian literature's greatest authors. Between the 1780s and the end of the nineteenth century, an army of sad women... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080271630X
• ISBN13: 9780802716309
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Walker Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Insight into Women's Lives

This book depicts one of the starting points for feminism. Married women were at the mercy of their husbands (for example, all of a woman's property transferred to her husband at marriage); unmarried women, who really had no place, had few options. One of the very few options was work as a governess. This position reflected the social and cultural realities in England at the time. Very few accounts of the governess' experience survive, as they were not considered of interest, and, indeed, few governesses had the time and education necessary to document their lives. Ruth Brandon does an excellent job portraying the lives and times of these governesses, including Mary Wollstonecraft and her sisters and Anna Leonowens, whose life was the basis for "The King and I." The story of Claire Clairmont, who bore a child with Lord Byron out of wedlock, is especially a page turner. I highly recommend this book!

The beginnings of Women's Liberation

So, you think being a Governess is great? Read this book. Not only will you get a good insight on how it was to be a governess but you also see how the women's rights movement slowly got its start by trying to address the struggles of women and how men did everything in their power to suppress them.

Fascinating, but a little pedantic

The modern-day reader is most familiar with the 19th century profession of governess through the novels of the Bronte sisters. Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres is a chronicle of governessing in the late 18th and 19th century. Ruth Brandon follows the lives of seven highly unusual women who were either forced by circumstance or chose the solitary life of being a governess. Brandon's subjects are Agnes Porter, a governess who held an unusual rapport with her employers; Mary Wollstonecraft, who tried her hand at governessing before finally finding her calling in writing; Anna Leonowens, whose life inspired The King And I; and the women who made strides towards making governessing a liveable job. Eventually, their efforts would lead to the founding of Girton College at Cambridge, which had a profound effect on the profession as a whole. The governess was an unusual figure in the Victorian period. She belonged neither "upstairs" nor "downstairs," leading those that she lived with to treat her as an outcast. Governesses were underpaid and overworked, and those that were forced into the profession usually came from poor but genteel backgrounds (usually they were the daughters of clergymen). Brandon's source material is mostly not new--ie, its mostly diaries and novels--and her tone is a little pedantic, but her subject matter is extraordinarily fascinating.

Absorbing tales of injustice, misery and drama

The appeal of fiction's most famous governess - Jane Eyre - is the romance, of course. Take away the happy ending and what have you got? Well, you've got the penury and abuse which made up the lives of most actual governesses in 19th century Britain. Luckily for historian Brandon, the fascination of history does not depend on happy endings, although there is enough melodrama and injustice to fill a Thomas Hardy novel or two. Or six. Brandon centers on six women (and those around them), famous and obscure, who earned their living as governesses. None chose this powerless profession for the love of it. It was the only avenue for money making for a woman too genteel to become a servant. The only requirement was respectability. Her actual situation in the family was dependent, isolated and precarious. A governess was not expected to know any science or arithmetic. Her function was to turn out marriageable girls, and everyone was agreed that over-educated girls were unappealing to men. Brandon's choices of subjects necessarily depended on how much documentation survived of their lives. These lonely women wrote a lot - letters, journals - but little of it survived. Fame - as in the case of Mary Wollstonecraft and her less fortunate stepdaughter, Claire Clairmont - helped. Some of Brandon's choices were published writers. Anna Leonowen's 1870s memoirs became the basis for "The King and I," and Anna Jameson wrote on literature, art and, later, the rights of women. Agnes Porter, Brandon's first subject and the ideal of the governess, wrote lots of letters. She was one of the lucky ones, a natural teacher who remained two generations with one family and received a pension. She was also one of the last of an earlier generation, when governesses were employed by wealthy aristocrats who felt an obligation toward loyal servants. Not that the governess was a servant, exactly. She existed in a limbo between the kitchen and the drawing room and was often rejected by both. Even Miss Porter, beloved of the family, was ultimately powerless. A jealous second wife denied her a parlor of her own with the result that her social life was curtailed and a matrimonial hope extinguished. As the 19th century advanced, the middle class grew and required a more genteel education for their daughters. Middle-class women without an income or a husband could be companions or governesses. Though Mary Wollstonecraft died young, just before the dawn of the 19th century (after the birth of her even more famous daughter Mary Shelley, author of "Frankenstein") her strong views reverberated throughout society, making her, for the most part, an anathema. Mary "fought her way out of governessing to become a radical journalist," making a name for herself with "A Vindication of the Rights of Women," a manifesto shaped by her efforts to earn a living. Brandon brings her to life as a forceful, charismatic woman who captivated her charges while despising her servitude. Her brief lif