I once saw a painting by Richard Redgrave called The Poor Teacher. The heroine in the painting is dressed in a black plain dress, looks sad, and holds a letter in her hand that reads, "To my dear child..."
The Poor Teacher, Richard Redgrave, 1844, oil painting, 71 x 91.5cm, collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum
Judging by her state, combined with the old sheet music titled "Home, Sweet Home" on the piano beside her, I initially guessed that Redgrave was probably trying to express that the teacher was experiencing bereavement but was homesickness when he was away from home.
As a result, as you dig deeper, you will find that things are not so simple.
Redgrave's painting is actually an elegy of a Victorian lady.
In the Victorian era, women's social status was quite limited, and it was generally believed that women's natural mission was to become qualified wives and mothers, especially for ladies above the middle class of education, and the primary goal of life should be the same as the sisters in Pride and Prejudice, focusing on finding a golden turtle wife.
Under normal circumstances, such a lady lives and receives education by relying on her father's protection and property to prepare for growing up and marrying. When the age of marriage is reached, it is enough to find a good husband from the right family, have children, and take good care of the family.
Ladies should not go to work, because it is a kind of "depravity." But all the ladies who go out to work will be looked down upon.
To be honest, if the family is well-off, no one will want to go out to work and be poked in the spine.
But if you open up your face to work, there must be an irreversible change in the family, and you have lost the hope of marrying someone.
For example, when their parents died, they did not inherit the inheritance. According to the law at that time, women's inheritance rights were ranked after the male cousins of the family, and after the death of their parents, the family property would be inherited by the brothers of the family and even the cousins and cousins, and they did not get anything.
Or the family goes bankrupt, and the once-wealthy family falls into poverty overnight. In the 1830s and 1840s, there was an economic crisis in Britain, many banks failed, and there were not a few families involved.
Or if the father, who is the breadwinner of the family, suddenly falls ill, someone must stand up and take on the burden of supporting a large family.
It can be said that the fact that the lady went out to work itself hinted at the misfortune that her family had suffered.
She is faced with very few job options, and only school teachers and tutors are eligible.
Of course, although British society does not want to see women working, women's occupations are not only these two, but in factories and mines, female workers, sewing and repairing handicrafts, as well as waitresses, domestic nurses, all belong to the working class, at that time it was a lowly profession that was not on the table, not much better than the degenerate prostitutes, so educated ladies basically would not consider engaging in these occupations.
Teaching is the only option. Going to school as a teacher is equivalent to going into public work, being more despised and more onerous, and tutors are the best in comparison.
The profession of governess has existed for hundreds of years, and has always been the exclusive preserve of princes and nobles and wealthy people in high society, and the selection conditions are more demanding, considering both origin and aristocratic etiquette and knowledge level, although it is also a profession that serves people, but it is quite respected because of its rarity. After entering the 19th century, the status of tutors declined significantly. Because the size of the middle class in Britain, driven by the Industrial Revolution, has expanded dramatically, many wealthy middle-class families have begun to follow the example of high society to hire tutors, and tutors are no longer the exclusive of high society. But even so, the governess is still the most decent of all options.
What does this most decent profession have to offer desperate ladies?
Maybe it's just a handful of heartache. Because this profession is neither well treated nor respected.
In terms of payroll, the annual income of most resident tutors hovers between £20-80.
Take the Brontë sisters who have written famous works such as "Jane Eyre" and "Agnes Gray" as an example, before they became famous, because of their poor family, they had worked as a governess, the eldest sister Charlotte Brontë had been a year or so, and the third sister Anne Brontë had been a total of about five years. Anne Brontë's salary is £10 a quarter, £40 a year, and Charlotte Brontë is only £20 a year, including £4 of laundry, and only £16 is actually available.
The Brontë Sisters, Branwell Brontë, 1834, National Portrait Gallery, © London
What is the concept of this level of wage?
The annual income of the lowest-class people in the normal middle class at that time was generally between 100 and 150 pounds. Charles Dickens, 22, first joined the Morning Chronicle in 1834 and was already paid a whopping £273. In contrast, the Brontë sisters' annual wages are less than a fraction of that of the others.
The salaries of governesses have been excluded from the middle class. Even more infuriating is that it is sometimes even better than working-class women. For example, a female milking worker in a milk mill, in the 1830s, also had a weekly salary of 9 shillings, according to the 1971 reform before the algorithm, 1 pound is equal to 20 shillings, calculated to have an income of about 24 pounds a year, much higher than Charlotte Brontë.
There are also some female governesses who have nowhere to go, and when they advertise to find a job, they dare not even mention their wages.
In 1886, a young woman named Myra said she could teach "English, German, French... Music and painting", she only asked for "food, accommodation and laundry", that is, she did not even want a salary in order to have a shelter from the wind and rain.
To put it bluntly, tutoring is just a humble profession in vain, and it really does not make any benefits.
As for the respect that should be there, that is even less.
The situation of the governesses who live in the employer's house is quite delicate, and in terms of social status, they are not the working class that serves people, but since they are paid from the employer's family, the employer naturally does not treat them with courtesy as they do with friends of the same class.
Charlotte Brontë understands this. She worked for several months at the home of her first employer, sidgwicks, and suffered serious physical and mental injuries.
First of all, the children in the family are not easy to discipline.
She had been teased and bullied by the children when she first arrived, and once the children threw stones at her and hit her temples, and no one spoke for her.
Another time at dinner, a child put his hand directly into Charlotte's mouth, said with a hippie smile, "I love you, Miss Brontë..." Mrs. Sichvik saw that the child was so disrespectful, and said lightly, "Love the governess, my child." With the connivance of Mrs. Sichvik, the children became even more lawless. Charlotte felt that "the efforts made to please and educate the children were in vain..."
Parents do not treat tutors as equals, which is more lethal.
Charlotte found that Mrs. Sichvik knew neither what she was, nor interested in knowing, and had no intention of making friends with the daughter of the poor priest's family. Mrs. Sichvik "never spoke for more than five minutes" to her "except when she was cursing", and she remained isolated at home. Even if the Sichvik family's estate sits on a picturesque hillside and offers a beautiful view of the Eyre Valley, she has no intention of appreciating it, as if she has lost interest in everything, living every day in "chagrin, pain and worry", becoming "no longer aware of herself", and even imagining that others will "respect and love her".
At the same time, Mrs. Sichvik also arranged many needlework for her outside of teaching.
Reasonable tutors are mainly responsible for teaching children over 5 years old in the employer to read, arithmetic, foreign languages, music, etc., and attend classes for a certain number of days a week. The family teacher generally starts to accompany the children on a morning walk at five or six o'clock in the morning, prays at seven o'clock in the morning, and then eats breakfast together, and after breakfast, according to the class schedule, the class is held in the classroom at home for a day, until dinner time, sometimes according to the requirements of the employer, at dinner and after dinner will also be practiced. But in any case, the role of the tutor is to teach. But many unscrupulous employers see that the tutor is idle and will arrange additional needlework for them.
Charlotte was then overwhelmed by Mrs. Sichvik's "sea of needlework." She told her second sister Emily that she had all kinds of needlework on hand, and that she wanted to "make the hem of the clothes out of a few yards of linen, make a nightcap out of muslin cloth, and dress for dolls."
In the Victorian era, "needlework" had a special connotation, and women needlework workers were regarded as very low-class workers, who had to work 15-18 hours a day during the busy season, and even needed to take special drugs to refresh themselves in order to ensure that they could finish their work.
Therefore, to let a lady's governess do needlework is actually a class humiliation. And counting the length of work, I am afraid that the tutor is even worse than the needlework woman.
Two years later, Charlotte moved to work as a governess at the White family, experiencing the same kind of torture as the Sicivik family.
The Children of the White family are also very "rude" and "wild", and Mrs. White is "rude" and "conceited". Even if Charlotte made only one mistake, Mrs. White would get angry in a "very rude and unladylike way" and force her to give in.
And the White family's needlework is endless. Charlotte reluctantly said in a letter to her good friend Ellen Nussey: "Please forgive me for my brief reply, because my time is completely occupied." Mrs. White wanted me to do the needlework well. I can't do a lot of things during the day and the kids need special care, so I have to spend the evening on this."
Charlotte served both employers and was treated in this way, showing how widespread this exploitation is.
No wonder she recalls her short tenure as a governess after many years and still says with trepidation: "Only those who have put themselves in the shoes of a tutor can see the dark side of human nature... Seeing that respectable human nature gives way to selfishness and irritability every day..."
Redgrave's paintings also subtly depict this layer of exploitation, such as a roll of red wool rolling out of a basket at the feet of a female teacher, suggesting that she has to knit sweaters and needlework in her spare time. Redgrave has two younger sisters in the family, in order to subsidize the family also went to become a tutor, presumably he must know the situation of the tutor, will take this painting for the majority of tutors to send a sigh.
"The Poor Teacher" the poor teacher partial
Interestingly, Charlotte Brontë wrote a very idealized work like Jane Eyre after suffering all kinds of bitterness at her employer's house. Although Jane Eyre suffered a lot in the orphanage, she had a good life as a tutor at her employer, Mr. Rochester's house, and eventually went around and married Mr. Rochester and became a hostess. Compared to the real-world life of a governess, this plot is already quite Mary Sue.
Anne Brontë, in contrast to her sister, shows nakedly the suffering of the governess's experience in Agnes Gray. Before publication, Charlotte worriedly told Anne that her work was too realistic and might cause discomfort to readers.
When the two books were published, Jane Eyre became a hit, while Agnes Gray was in a state of indifference and did not receive the attention it deserved until decades later.
I think this may be because 19th-century British women are too bitter, no one wants to add to the heart, prefer to use the story of the reunion to talk about comfort.