PULS
Foto: Matthias Friel
The governess, a woman who resides in a family's home to educate the children of the house, occupies a strange social position as neither family nor servant. Apart from the many guidebooks published for governesses throughout the Victorian era, her social ambiguity has fascinated writers since the turn of the 19th century and as a result, we encounter the figure of the governess in well-known literary works. In this reading-intensive seminar, we will take a closer look at this figure that continues to haunt our cultural imagination. We'll observe how her portrayal has shifted over the course of more than a century, discuss gender and class politics of that era, see how she is reinvented according to generic conventions, and trace how she has become a staple of canonic literature as either the keeper of the status quo or the harbinger of social change.
Reading List:
Jane Austen: Emma (1815)
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre (1847)
Louisa May Alcott: "Behind a Mask" (1866)
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Henry James: "The Turn of the Screw" (1898)
Katherine Mansfield: "The Little Governess" (1915)
Winfred Watson: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (1938)
Essay
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