SOURCE: “Reader, I Married Him,” in The Victorian Governess, The Hambledon Press, 1993, pp. 1-9.

In the following excerpt, Hughes provides an overview of nineteenth-century fiction featuring the character of the governess, beginning with Jane Austen's 1816 novel Emma, and ending with James' 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw.

Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present.

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)

It is a curious proof of the present feeling towards governesses, that they are made the heroines of many popular novels.

Mary Maurice, Governess Life (1849)

If we think we know the Victorian governess it is because we have read her story—or something which purports to be her story—in numerous novels of the day. For that reason any investigation into her life and times has to begin with the popular images, the confusions and the fantasies which...