Charlotte Bront
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Charlotte Brontлs outcry might seem exaggerated
to us, but Victorian novels and paintings mostly do not picture the position of a governess in a positive way. Even if it might seem unusual, as the governess is a servant, a mere shade in the house of a family, she has yet caught the attention of artists. Maybe it is precisely her inconspicuous but obstinate presence that attracts the attention. Although she has an acknowledged status, she does not completely fit in her environment. She is different from other servants concerning social rank and education, and though belonging to the same social class (sometimes even belonging to a higher social level, being an aristocrat working in the house of a “bourgeois”) as the family, she has to work out of economic reasons.
Thus, as in reality, the governesses in Agnes Grey and No Name have to work because their fathers respectively got ruined or died. Yet for one of them – Agnes Grey – there is another reason: “To go out into the world; to enter upon a new life; to act for myself, to exercice my unused facilities; to try my unknown powers.” This is because Agnes does not respond to the situation of her family with the disheartenment of her father, mother and sister. She has the eagerness of youth to make the best of the situation, to dare to tackle a new challenge. But her father displays in his reaction the negative perception his contemporaries have of a governess situation: “And a tear glistened in his eye as he added–No, no! afflicted as we are, surely we are not brought to that pass yet.” And Agnes will lose her romantically distorted vision (“To train the tender plants, and watch their buds unfolding day by day!”) when she takes office at the house of the Bloomfield family. Her vision of a second home, with a “kind, warm-hearted matron” is soon shattered. The parents are impolite and behave condescendingly towards her, the children resemble little devils who – having soon discovered the weak sides of their tutor – take pleasure in exhausting her with little power games, constant opposition and extreme obstinacy. While her daily work is highly demanding (“the task of instruction was as arduous for the body as for the mind”), injuring (“..when I put her to bed; then bending over her, while she lay all smiles and good humour () I said, as cheerfully and kindly as before–Now, Mary Ann, just tell me that word before I kiss you good-night. You are a good girl now, and, of course, you will say it. No, I wont. Then I cant kiss you. Well, I dont care.”) and sometimes even humiliating (There now, cried Tom, triumphantly, looking up from his viands with his mouth almost too full for speech. There now, Miss Grey! you see Ive got my supper in spite of you: and I havent picked up a single thing!”), she cannot rely on the parents as a help in her educational task. The governess is blamed for the childrens bad behaviour: “As she, generally, was pretty quiet in her parents presence, and they were impressed with the notion of her being a remarkably gentle child, her falsehoods were readily believed, and her loud uproars led them to suspect harsh and injudicious treatment on my part; and when, at length, her bad disposition became manifest even to their prejudiced eyes, I felt that the whole was attributed to me.”
The daily “trials” make Agnes feel pity for herself, the occasional emotional outbursts are a means of outbalancing the self-restrainement she has to inflict on herself during her long and wearisome work-day.
Agnes experiences correspond to those of Norah Vanstone in No Name by Wilkie Collins, as she writes in a letter to her sister “Now it is all over I may acknowledge to you, my darling, that I was not happy. I tried hard to win the affection of the two little girls I had to teach; but they seemed, I am sure I cant tell why, to dislike me from the first. Their mother I have no reason to complain of. But their grandmother, who was really the ruling power in the house, made my life very hard to me. My inexperience in teaching was a constant subject of remark with her; and my difficulties with the children were always visited on me as if they had been entirely of my own making.” But in No Name, Miss Garth forms a striking contrast to the assumed typical governess and her fate. In fact, she seems to be an idealized image of how a governess should be and be treated. From the beginning on, she is presented as a “member of the family” , and “the air of habitual authority with which she looked about her, spoke well for her position in Mr. Vanstones family. This was evidently not one of the forlorn, persecuted, pitiably dependent order of governesses. Here was a woman who lived on ascertained and honorable terms with her employers–a woman who looked capable of sending any parents in England to the right-about, if they failed to rate her at her proper value.” Even though the Vanstone daughters have grown out of the age that needs a governess, Miss Garth stays in the family, as she has a firm place in its affection (“But Miss Garth had lived too long and too intimately under Mr. Vanstones roof to be parted with for any purely formal considerations; and the first hint at going away which she had thought it her duty to drop was dismissed with such affectionate warmth of protest that she never repeated it again, except in jest.” ) For the two girls she is a second motherly figure, and becomes the only one when their mother dies. She brings comfort to the Vanstone daugthers, she remains a refuge to the young women through the entire novel. And she is a friend to their mother as well , a relationship that goes even beyond the good terms a governess could only hope to be in with the mistress of the house. This governess is shown as a strong and loving person, taking her fate (and that of the girls) in her own hands, the reader is inclined to feel a certain admiration for her. But in her description, there are still typical elements of the clichй perception of the governess at that time: “addressing Magdalen with the merciless self-possession of a middle-aged lady, unprovided for the occasion with any kissing remembrances of her own” . This idea of the governess as a loveless old spinster is of course due to the fact that she could not be married. But it was moreover the fact that she often would not marry, as her situation bound her to the home of her charges. She was of no interest to men coming into that house, even a sort of taboo. On one hand, her social position was too high for visitors to simply lust after her, but on the other hand, her financial