What Was It Really Like to Be a Victorian Governess? | Victorian History for Sleep

A Victorian governess was educated enough to be treated as a lady and paid a wage inside someone else's house - which left her belonging to neither the family nor the servants. That contradiction, not loneliness or a difficult pupil, is what made the job so hard to hold. Tonight's four connected stories: Anne Bronte in the Robinson schoolroom, responsible for the children's day without the authority to enforce it; nineteen-year-old Edith Gates in Reading in 1876, whose diary catches the hour when paid work quietly becomes an evening lived under the employer's roof; Miss Maurice and the gap between situations, where a post that ends is a structural feature of the work rather than a misfortune; and Kate Brind, carrying the same question all the way to colonial New Zealand. Two hours of calm, softly spoken history for sleep, ending with quiet fire sounds. Made for falling asleep to - the humour is lightest at the start and fades to none. Good for bedtime listening, insomnia, relaxation, or quiet background while you read. If quiet history helps you sleep, subscribe to Long Ago Tonight and tell us where in the world you're listening from. Agnes Grey is a novel, and we treat it as experience-informed fiction rather than as a record of Anne's own posts. Where a salary, a curriculum or a schoolroom object is typical rather than documented for a named person, we say typical. Where the evidence stops, we stop with it. Chapters: 0:00 Anne Bronte and the Unwinnable Schoolroom 49:19 Edith Gates After Lessons 1:19:24 Miss Maurice and the Gap Between Situations 1:45:14 Kate Brind Carries the Question to New Zealand 2:08:19 Drifting toward rest 2:11:17 Fire ambience Sources and further reading: The figure of the governess, British Library: https://www.britishlibrary.cn/en/arti... Anne Bronte - the third sister, Great Writers Inspire, University of Oxford: https://writersinspire.podcasts.ox.ac... The Victorian Governess (preview): https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT04... Report of the Board of Management, Governesses' Benevolent Institution, 1857: https://books.google.com/books/about/... Essays on Woman's Work - The Profession of the Teacher: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi... Writing Slate, 1880-1910, The Henry Ford: https://www.thehenryford.org/collecti... The Victorian Governess in colonial New Zealand: https://www.hmc.ox.ac.uk/sitefiles/th... Women Writers in the Romantic Age: https://archive.org/download/ad159e3c... Survey of London - Harley Street, Queen's College, Nos 43-49, UCL Bartlett: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/sites/...