49.
Author(s): Kathryn Hughes
Title: The Victorian Governess
Publication: Hardback
Pages: 204
Genre: Nonfiction, History, 19th-century
Acquisition: Purchased used from Abe Books
Date Completed: June 12, 2011
Rating: ****1/2

The history of the Victorian governess is a difficult one to write for one very basic reason: a lack of reliable primary source material. Though historians have access to some government and institutional data, and a clutch of letters, magazines, and a few precious journals, the gaps these sources have left remain far more significant than the enlightenment they can provide.

Fiction will tell us that the governess plays an essential role in the lives of upper-middle-class and upper-class households, but what of the real women who toil away in isolated schoolrooms? While some "histories" of the profession feel justified in using fiction as fact in the absence of actual historical documentation, Hughes attempts to construct a history of the governess that is as grounded in reality as possible. Her examination does indeed discuss fictional governesses - in the first chapter, after which her allusions to novels are kept to a minimum. Instead, Hughes relies on what documentation is available, and focuses on the lives of a few known governesses, and the popular publications which discussed the "plight of the governess" during the nineteenth-century, in order to piece together as accurate an analysis as possible.

Hughes' account fully acknowledges the gaps that are inherent in such a project, but uses this absence of information to make a few significant observations about the role of the governess in Victorian society. The volume as a whole is concise and smart, and makes good use of the resources at hand. Overall, I found The Victorian Governess far preferable to Ruth Brandon's Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres.