Governesses： The Real Stories Behind Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey

Hello and welcome. So today we're going to talk about governesses. It was a big part in both Anne and Charlotte's writing, of course Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey, and I think it's a really good subject to look into. I've had lots of fun researching it, so come on let's go and have a look. So what was a governess? Well of course she was a teacher within the family home, but on top of that she was a mother, a moral guide, and in some ways an example even though obviously not in the career department because nobody wanted their daughter to go on to be a governess unless it was really necessary. So she was also a companion and a chaperone because of course when the girls of the household got that bit older and they wanted a mix with gentlemen you needed a chaperone. So it wasn't just teaching, there was so much more to it as well. And I think for a young girl going into this particular role it must have been really difficult. Suddenly overnight you are a mother, a teacher, a guide, a companion, you know you have to make decisions for a small person or a slightly older person and you yourself are still a child. Who became a governess? Well normally it was young women. We say that because obviously they were cheap and they were enthusiastic. The older they got the harder it was to find jobs but they weren't uncommon. Either you were middle class and you couldn't be kept by your family for whatever financial reason and therefore you needed to earn your own money or you were from a rich background and the family had fallen on hard times and you needed that way to make your own money. And of course being a governess was sociably acceptable whereas anybody who went out and did bar work or worked in a shop or a factory was classed as working class. So whether you're middle class and above the only option was to become a governess which seems pretty rubbish to Or marry a rich man that was your only other option. So who employed governesses? Really hard word for me to say. Governesses. Why is it when you say a word so many times sometimes it just doesn't sound right no matter how much you say it? Now I'm starting to question the word governesses. That sounds like a Scottish island doesn't it? Governesses. Yeah that's right. Anyway so who employed a governess? Ideally you want to work for a rich family where paying conditions were that much better. Most of the family had probably been taught by governesses so knew how to treat them. They knew what was expected of them. YouTube won't let me show you this video but I hope these screenshots give you an idea of what's going on. And of course in the large house you will get your own room which is probably a nice size and maybe even your own sitting room so again great advantage. Also if you're from a rich family and you have to go out and be a governess you're suddenly going to be surrounded by the sort of people you are used to in your own class so you know how to behave and how to act so suddenly you're comfortable again. Wages were normally better in rich houses. Again they were used to governesses. They knew what the going rate were. They knew what was needed. Again YouTube said no so here's some screenshots. And also you might have the chance to travel. If the family go on holiday there is no way they're going to want to look after their own children and you could go with them so there's chance of getting out and about and seeing things you probably wouldn't have seen. Upper middle class started to employ governesses. It was like a status symbol. It was almost like trying to get that higher up the class system but the problem with that was that unless that some of the mothers obviously had never had a governess before and didn't know how to treat them didn't know that they weren't weren't quite a servant but then again they weren't part of the family and some mothers became jealous because obviously suddenly your children are with this person all the time. You also found that the mothers might interfere. Not quite used to standing back and letting somebody else discipline their children so there was always that worry of the interference when you went to a middle upper middle class family. Being a middle upper class the rooms in the house were smaller so the chances are you would just have your bedroom you wouldn't have a sitting room. And of course we go back to wages. Wages in upper middle class were not particularly great so the governess might be more of a lady than the family she's working for. She might have come from a good background or a good family and of course this makes a mother feel on edge. Is the governess looking down her nose at her? Is she judging her? Does she think she's not a lady? And of course that can cause huge problems. So what does the job of being a governess involve? Well obviously teaching. Mostly girls between the age of about 5 and 18 and obviously you're preparing them for marriage so hopefully by 18 they're off on their merry way with their new husband. Sometimes it's boys but most of the rich upper class families choose to send their boys to boarding school after the age of about 8. This was quite common in the mid 19th century. So if you do have a boy it's only for a small amount of time and you're very much teaching them the basics three R's reading writing arithmetic because once they go to boarding school they're taught like a man you could say. So the girls would be taught English language. You need your your daughter to be able to speak properly says me who can't get my words out. She needs an understanding of geography and of course conversational French. You want her to be able to have a conversation but no more. You don't want her to know business French. You don't want her to embarrass her future husband at the dinner table by no more than he does. And of course then you've got history. There's always good to know your kings and your queens and the basic things like that. And of course there were other lessons involved. The lessons for life you could say. The singing I don't know if you could call that lesson for life but it turned you into a lady. Singing, piano, sewing, dancing you know things like that that were expected of a young lady of that status. And then of course you've got the modest behaviour, the correct way to behave, etiquette, how to be within crowds, how to keep up conversation. All these things were so important to what would hopefully be one of the ladies. And then there were things like Bible reading to help them become a good Christian because that was very much a standard thing for all children in the 19th century to know their Bible. What did the governors get in return? Well from reading Jane I can imagine we're all expecting not much and I'm sorry to tell you yeah you're right. So wages were between £30 a year which is about £4,000 in today's money and £80 a year which is about £10,000 or thereabouts in today's money. And of course this is the mid-19th century we're talking so this is the time when the Brontes would have been governesses or a roundabout. You would get your room, you would get meals, you could have your laundry done but as I will explain later Charlotte Bronte found out that yes there was a deduction for that out of your wages surprise surprise. And then you would have time off but not much I'm afraid but you did have the knowledge that you were not a burden on your family anymore and that was priceless. No longer did your father have to try and cover your expenses and your cost of living and that was worth a lot. But there were problems let me tell you about them. Governesses weren't the family so they weren't from the upstairs but neither were they servants from the downstairs so they found it very difficult to know where their place was and who to confide in which of course made them very lonely. They had no one they could talk to obviously not the children either and all their friends and family could be miles away and nowadays we can get in a car and get anywhere within a few hours but not about them. Obviously the servants resented you because you again you weren't one of them you were more like the upstairs and they had to cook meals for you and they had to wash your clothes so they weren't very happy to have you. They used to call governesses stuck up and things like that because you know they treated themselves a bit better than the servants and they didn't have to wear a uniform either. And of course if you were from a better class of family than the family that you're working from there's that resentment all the time that worry that you're going to say something or do something that the family disapproves of. One of the big problems that many governesses used to talk about was the fact that they could never earn enough to be able to save for that old age because once they finished being a governess what was there for them? If they hadn't married and they don't inherit what happens when you can no longer work or get employment? It was really difficult to think about the future when you have no idea how you're going to cope. The other thing that I read about quite a lot was the children, the discipline. Mothers didn't like the governess doing the discipline especially in the upper middle classes and would often take the children's side and look down their nose at the governess for telling their darling children off. So this was always tricky you could imagine you're being told to teach these children but they're horrors and you can't stop them from running riot and then the mother walks in the room she can see it all kicking off and yet you're told off because of the children's behaviour and for telling them off. I mean it must have been awful you can't do right for doing wrong and of course you might have multiple children to educate if you've got three or four and they're all at different stages it's very difficult to spread yourself around the room and of course the work was very hard work it was long hours you were up at the crack of dawn you were teaching you you would take the children out in the afternoon for a walk maybe to get them some burn off some energy but you were with them all day and the amount of time or little time you had off for yourself was very small it might be the time that you wrote a letter back home or that you slept you know there wasn't much time for anything else. One of the problems for the employer is how do you know this woman's any good you can get references are the references from people who just want to get rid of your governess and at the end of the day if your governess is teaching terrible french to your child that child will learn terrible french and but that's how it was there was no real qualifications there was no expectations that they must know a certain amount so some houses had loads of governesses because of discipline issues because of education because she didn't get on with the family so again not a very stable job you never quite knew what was around the corner what does an employer want well if i was looking for a governess a plain girl this was the most common thing asked for you don't want an attractive governess could you imagine the it would be awful so they don't want a beauty in the house that's going to turn heads and also don't want them for the staff the visitors anybody you want something very plain very sensible and well presented to teach your children you also want them from a good background and i don't necessarily mean a good family but you want them from a respectable background because this person's going to be giving your child moral guidance you want them to come from a good household someone that's going to prepare your child for marriage so you need them to teach them well but no more than what a male knows because the last thing you want is your daughter embarrassing herself at the dinner table in front of your guest because she knows more about geography than the suitor at the end of the table i mean could you imagine a good reputation so the last thing you want to hear is that this woman that you've employed is always down the pub on a day off getting drunk and chatting up all the men you know she's representing your household you don't want a drunk or a flirt and of course you want them to have good christian morals and cheap and that was something i kept seeing everywhere you want a bargain which sounds awful when you think this is somebody's life and basically you want them to do everything a mother a teacher a nanny a confidant everything but you really want it for a good price it's just a hot seems awful now with modern eyes of course you know what i'm coming to the conclusion actually being a governess was an awful job why would you do it i know where you would do it because you need the money but oh god could you imagine that if your father came to you lived in a beautiful rich house with all these lovely things and horses and lovely dresses and your father came to you and said i'm ever so sorry but i've lost everything i own and you've got to go out and work and guess what you're doing yep you're looking after someone's horrible children you'd be absolutely gutted you can see why you would marry any spotty little man that comes your way then well i don't know governess spotty man not sure and you might only see this job advertised in the newspaper with a tiny little snippet and you couldn't google them to find out what the family were like and have a little look on their facebook page to see if they were a nightmare or not so you would write to them tell them who you are and what you can do and they go yeah go on then and you would just turn up with no idea what they were like as a family unless someone knew someone but if you dug if you answered a newspaper article goodness knows what you were turning up to i wonder if many girls turned up at jobs took one look at it and went no i'm off and turn around and go home again that's like blind date of the crazy so let's talk about the brontes only two of the three sisters actually were governesses and that was charlotte and the youngest and bronte um emily thank goodness was never a governess i mean i couldn't imagine how she would have coped with the restrictions and the expectations of being a governess it would have well she wouldn't have survived i don't think she wouldn't have lasted five minutes but let's talk about ann so ann's first job was from april 1839 to the end of the year with the inghams they were mill owners and they owned blake hall in mirfield she was only 19 years old when she started so she was not sure how you pronounce that do put it in the comments to help me along i'm not quite sure how you would say that and he was seven years old and then there was mary who was five years old and they were so badly behaved and i really do think ann's novel agnes gray the children were based on these children the mother would blame poor ann for their children's behavior making it such a difficult place to work so like we said before it was ann's fault that they run riot not the children but reading looking into it even more now the children were absolute nightmares so then ann went on to spend five years as governess to the robinson family the well-known family in thought green from may 1840 until until june 1845 and she was the longest employed out of all the bronte siblings so the children was lydia jr elizabeth known as betsy and mary and she managed to teach them discipline and self-respect in the end and this really paid off because they really started to care for her and they bought her flossy as a puppy the cavalier spaniel because they really appreciated what they did and i that's lovely ah a puppy anyone want to buy me a puppy but can you believe this ann earned whilst at thought green 40 pounds a year for looking after three girls okay then from and then when branwell came to look after edmund the one boy he got paid 80 pounds a year that's double what poor ann was getting for one child right can you see the injustice there straight away this whole male female divide yeah and we talk about unfair earnings now for men and women wow back then so let's talk about charlotte charlotte had had a temporary role with sidwich family for three months in 1839 and she found that position really hard and i talked about the sidwich family in one of my previous videos and i will put a little link up here for you to have a look charlotte's second experience of being a governess was in 1841 at the house of john white a bradford merchant who with his brother had inherited upperwood house in rawdon from a wealthy uncle in 1818 he and his wife jane had three children there was sarah who was eight jasper six who charlotte taught but there was arthur the baby who was only two so luckily she didn't have him to look after in a letter to ellen she said in taking the place i have made a large sacrifice in the way of salary in the hope of securing comfort by which word i do not mean to express good eating and drinking or warm fires or a soft bed but the society of cheerful faces and minds and hearts not dug out by a lead mine or cut from a marble quarry charlotte's salary was certainly very low it was only 20 pounds a year i mean this was a lot lower than the average four pounds had to be deducted a year for her laundry can you believe that this was exactly half the sum that ann was earning in thought green despite the fact that ann was younger and less experienced than charlotte it's really not hard to see that both jana and agnes gray with their governesses in their main story was based on the two sisters employment it's very obvious to see this and then when you look back through history in an example is in 1851 the census revealed that 25 000 women earned their living as a governess that's unbelievable the governess benevolent institution was founded in 1843 and incorporated in 1848 and this organization was created to support governesses in need they provided temporary assistance granted annuities to elderly governesses and even offered a home between jobs for small weekly fee additionally they ran an asylum for aged governesses connected to the institution charlotte bronte wasn't too keen on this on this institution and she was known to say both absurd and cruel she felt that women were being taught to expect too much when many employers were still underpaying in expecting too much from these very young women here is something that charlotte said no one but myself can tell how hard a governess's work is to me but no one but myself is aware how utterly adverse my whole mind and nature are to the employment do not think that i fail to blame myself or that i leave any means unemployed to conquer this feeling some of my greatest difficulties lie in the things that would appear to you comparatively trivial i find it so hard to repel the rude familiarity of children and i find it so difficult to ask either servant or mistress for anything i want however much i want it it's less pain to me to endure the greatest inconvenience and to request its removal i am a fool heaven knows i cannot help it thank you for watching and i hope you've enjoyed learning about governesses and it sounded like an awful job and i must admit reading agnes gray really put me off ever doing anything like that as a career the children were horrific anyway so thank you for watching i know i ask this every time but please do the whole likey subscribey thing because it really does help me out and it lets youtube know that we want to watch more bronte content and i think it's wonderful all your comments that you send me and all your suggestions and all your feedback is great so thank you and thank you for watching i can't believe so many people are watching my videos it really warms my heart so thank you so i will see you all next friday for more bronte adventures until then see you soon bye