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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 312 – Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 17: The Governess - transcript

(Originally aired 2025/04/20 - listen here)

 The “Our F/Favorite Tropes” series examines popular historic romance tropes from the point of view of female couples and considering both the similarities and differences from opposite-sex couples. In literature, a trope is a recurring motif that is understood to carry a certain expected structure and meaning. The trope could be a situation, such as forced proximity, or a character type, such as the lovable rogue. It could be a type of relationship, such as a second-chance romance, or even a mini-script, such as a Cinderella story.

One popular type of trope is based on occupations that come with a certain set of social expectations about how the character will relate to those around her, including potential love interests. Today, we’re going to look at the governess romance.

The governess was part of the educational ecosystem in well-off European families beginning around the 17th century, but coming to its heyday in the later 18th and 19th centuries. (Wealthy American families might also employ a governess, but the institution was less established there.) Our image of the governess comes largely from English history, and the prevalence of the profession varied in different countries. Though the majority of governesses were of the same nationality as their pupils, there was a certain degree of international exchange. Families might prize foreign governesses—especially French ones—if language instruction was valued. And English governesses similarly had opportunities to work in other countries—though few as far away as Anna Leon-Owens, the inspiration for the character in The King and I.

The education of girls was less prioritized than that of boys and had different goals. For the middle and upper classes, boys typically were sent away to school. For girls there was a wider range of possibilities. Some received no formal schooling at all, picking up basic literacy and essential arithmetic at home, and otherwise focusing on the skills of a homemaker. Some did go to boarding schools, or perhaps to day-schools closer to home. But if the family could afford it, girls often received both their formal education and training in social skills, such as music and art, from a governess in their own homes. If a family had a governess, she would also typically be responsible for the initial education of young boys before they were sent away. The daughters of the family would be her responsibility until they were old enough to come out in society. Once her charges were married, she would need to find a new position, or perhaps strike out on her own running a school.

In a previous trope episode, when I discussed employer-employee relationships, I didn’t include the governess because she occupies a somewhat anomalous position—much like a professional companion does. Like the lady’s companion, the governess is expected to be of good social class—perhaps even of the same class as her employer—because part of her duties is to instill those class expectations in her pupils. But in contrast to the companion, the governess is clearly an employee, who receives wages. She is embedded in the family, but not part of the family; accompanying them when they traveled as long as her charges were present, but not socializing or dining with them except perhaps in rare informal circumstances. At the same time, like the lady’s companion, she was definitely not a servant, and did not socialize with the household servants or share the same quarters as them.

The anomalous position meant that her life was often lonely and isolated. It goes without saying that a governess was, by definition, unmarried. Before the later 19th century, the job was one of the few respectable options for unmarried women of the professional classes: the daughters of clergymen, or those in legal or medical professions—all situations where there would be no family money to provide a dowry or independence. The novels of Jane Austen provide a multitude of examples of the dynamics of the profession. Ironically, as more professional opportunities opened for women across the 19th century, women became more willing to view governess as a deliberate career choice, rather than a last chance to avoid poverty—an alternative to marriage, rather than a poor second choice.

The ideal governess was well-educated, widely read, multi-lingual, and accomplished in the arts—the same characteristics that were supposed to make her pupils valuable marriage prospects. All this is the complex background behind the attraction of the governess romance: her suitability as a partner in everything except her financial situation, her close connection with her employer’s family, and yet the strict social taboo that nominally prevents any more intimate relationship.

In the heterosexual governess romance, the central conflict is the violation of that social barrier, due to attraction sparked by the inescapable proximity of the two characters. The male protagonist is typically either an adult son of the family (who risks disinheritance if he falls for an inappropriate object) or a widowed father of the governess’s charges. Another option being an unmarried male guardian to the girls she is to teach. The governess is in a double-bind: she is expected to retain the highest moral standards (as an example for her pupils), but if she rejects the romantic advances she risks being dismissed. In real life, she may also be subject to less romantic advances from an already-married man in the household, but outside of Jane Eyre, this is rarely a good set-up for a romance novel.

On the positive side, the contexts for initiating romantic feelings can include bonding with a guardian or widowed father over concern for the girls, which can reframe them as a sort of fictive “couple”—a sort of “fake it till you make it” situation. In the case where the male romantic prospect is an adult son of the family, there may be all manner of reasons for the initial attraction to break through the social barrier, while the major hurdle may be figuring out how to achieve a happy ending despite family opposition—or perhaps how to resolve that opposition. All manner of other tropes can be combined with the governess scenario.

But let’s shift over to exploring the possibilities for a same-sex governess romance. Some of these may be closely parallel. The widowed mother of the governess’s charges? Both may be feeling the lack of human connection with someone who could be a peer, whether the bereavement is old or recent. If the marriage was not a love-match, the widow may have no previous experience of enjoying romance. If you take a broad-minded notion of romance structures, she needn’t even be widowed. A long-absent husband may leave a mother longing for closer companionship. The same social barrier will need to be broken down, but without the same risk to the governess’s reputation. Conversely, such a pairing might bring in questions of jealousy between two competing maternal figures with respect to the girls.

As with a heterosexual romance, the students might be orphans under the guardianship of someone other than a parent, though it should be noted that “guardianship” here probably wouldn’t mean full legal control, as the law would give precedence to a male relative for that position. Still a female relative might be the one with primary day-to-day oversight, and that could introduce a tension into the romance if a separate legal guardian disapproved of the romantic relationship.

In these previous cases, there is still the hazard of an employment relationship morphing into a romantic one, with the governess not feeling entirely free to be honest in her reactions.

Even without the problems of male attention, the governess’s anomalous social position creates similar issues for establishing and maintaining a romance with another female member of her employer’s family—a visiting relative or one living in the household on a long-term basis. If the governess is being treated as an equal by a member of the family, she may be perceived as stepping out of line by those who have control over her employment. Conversely, if she becomes romantically involved with a woman in a lower social position, her partner will be perceived as stepping out of line and would face disapproval from all sides. One category of person who might seem a natural option, if present in the household, would be a lady’s companion—both stand outside the usual hierarchies, while falling roughly within the same social status. Their major romantic barrier might be the degree to which their time is not their own.

And what about the possibility of a governess falling in love with one of her pupils? Or perhaps a bit less questionably, with the older sister of one of her pupils. Governesses were sometimes not substantially older than their charges. Imagine something like Jane Austen’s Emma where the sublimated romantic jealousy that Emma feels towards Miss Taylor is more overt, and a relationship that has shifted from teacher-pupil to friendship, then shifts further to love? Or perhaps a governess is hired to teach young children and then an absent older sister returns home and finds herself drawn to this person whom her sisters adore. The social barrier has already been disrupted because the two are expected to have a close connection. We can imagine further possibilities where a close emotional bond between teacher and pupil is reignited if the two meet again later in life, with the dynamic merging into something akin to “childhood sweethearts.”

Regardless of the exact details, the governess romance rests on several key points: intellectual and class equality, an artificial social barrier, economic precarity, and a degree of inescapable proximity. Beyond that, all you need to do is mix in a basis for attraction, a handful of personal qualms about the wisdom of pursuing that attraction, and an external crisis or two to trip them up before finding their happy ending.

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

• The dynamics of the “governess romance”
• F/f possibilities for governess romances

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