SOURCE: “A Perfect Treadmill of Learning,” in The Victorian Governess, The Hambledon Press, 1993, pp. 55-84.

In the following essay, Hughes provides an overview of governess life, discussing the oftentimes tumultuous relationship between the governess and the mother, the bond a governess might share with her students, and the typical subjects a governess was expected to teach.

We had eight hours a day of lessons, and sometimes even more, getting up at six o'clock, summer and winter, and commencing work at seven … [it was] a perfect treadmill of learning.

Georgiana Sitwell, recalling her schoolroom of 1834 Osbert Sitwell (ed.), Two Generations (1940)

Many mothers … will gladly engage a governess who will do the great work of education and will employ masters for the less important one of teaching.

Mary Maurice, Governess Life (1849)

Throughout Victoria's reign motherhood was regarded as the most valuable and natural component of female experience. By the middle...