Studies in the Novel, June 22nd, 1997
Governesses in the fiction of Sheridan Le Fanu were significantly unlike most Victorian portrayals of this profession. The governesses in Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre,' Anne Bronte's 'Agnes Grey,' and Henry James's 'Turn of the Screw' were exploited, abused, overworked and socially ignored. Le Fanu showed women rebelling and temporarily succeeding against patriarchal power, although they either submitted or died by the book's end.
The stereotypical down-trodden, ill-used Victorian governess abandons her abject demeanor and launches into the domestic fray over social and cultural authority in...
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