ISO history of governess phenomenon & sexuality that arose
September 26, 2022 2:09 PM Subscribe
Please help me find preferably a documentary on the whole concept, purpose, practice of an older woman being given charge over young children, and the attendant sexual proclivities or perversions that sometimes resulted.
How prevalent -- if at all -- were the Victorian tales by Anonymous of domination/submission, discipline, etc.? British, French, etc. Gynocratic societies of pretty and severe ladies?? Huge repression. Some training for politeness? What? Fascinating where some of this literature stems from.
How prevalent -- if at all -- were the Victorian tales by Anonymous of domination/submission, discipline, etc.? British, French, etc. Gynocratic societies of pretty and severe ladies?? Huge repression. Some training for politeness? What? Fascinating where some of this literature stems from.
Response by poster: Sure. I must disclaim here: I am interested in the complexes, etc., that developed later in a child's life, certainly not for stories about child exploitation. So for example, David Collins and Amy on the soap opera Dark Shadows were too young to be in school? Doesn't seem like it. Liberties? Fantasies?
posted by noelpratt2nd at 2:48 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by noelpratt2nd at 2:48 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Kathryn Hughes discusses this phenomenon in her book The Victorian Governess (1993). She argues that it's basically a male sexual fantasy with very little basis in reality:
In 1868 the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine printed a series of readers' letters in praise of strict governesses and the benefits of corporal punishment. These attracted a great deal of interest, and more letters poured in. But again this appears to be mostly fantasy, probably concocted by the publisher Samuel Beeton (husband of Mrs Beeton of cookbook fame) who realised there was money to be made by turning a respectable women's magazine into a vehicle for barely-disguised pornographic fiction.
posted by verstegan at 3:11 PM on September 26, 2022 [21 favorites]
The appeal of governess pornography seems to have been that it enabled its readers to avoid any painful recognition of their own homosexual desires by allowing them to transpose the fantasy of a public school flogging onto a more acceptable female cast. That the majority of these stories ostensibly involved a woman beating a girl only confirms that it was the same-sex relationship which gave the scene its appeal.Whether or not you agree with Hughes that it's all about repressed homosexuality, I don't think there's much doubt that the figure of the dominant governess is basically erotic fantasy. In reality, most Victorian governesses were young and vulnerable women who were far more likely to be the victims of unwanted sexual attention from their employers.
In 1868 the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine printed a series of readers' letters in praise of strict governesses and the benefits of corporal punishment. These attracted a great deal of interest, and more letters poured in. But again this appears to be mostly fantasy, probably concocted by the publisher Samuel Beeton (husband of Mrs Beeton of cookbook fame) who realised there was money to be made by turning a respectable women's magazine into a vehicle for barely-disguised pornographic fiction.
posted by verstegan at 3:11 PM on September 26, 2022 [21 favorites]
Wealthy children in Victorian England wouldn't (usually, of course there would always be exceptions) go to a day school such as Americans are used to. The boys would receive private instruction at home from masters and then go to a boarding school, often at what we would regard as too young an age--some as young as eight, others at more like twelve. Sometimes if the family lived in London full time he might attend one of the ancient schools there. Girls from wealthy families would receive private instruction to the extent their parents thought it suitable for them, usually more in the way of decorative "accomplishments" than rigorous academics, or sometimes would be sent to boarding academies for similar educations, for the convenience of their parents. So the governess was for the boys and girls too young for schooling and to fill in supervisory gaps for older girls.
I believe that part of Dark Shadows is set in the mid-60s (or similar contemporary time) America, but I'm not an expert. Actually pretty rare to have governesses post-WWI.
posted by praemunire at 3:15 PM on September 26, 2022
I believe that part of Dark Shadows is set in the mid-60s (or similar contemporary time) America, but I'm not an expert. Actually pretty rare to have governesses post-WWI.
posted by praemunire at 3:15 PM on September 26, 2022
Best answer: Dark Shadows started out set in the mid-1960s. Supposedly David had a governess because he was a very troubled child (not surprising, with all the supernatural goings-on at Collinwood), and his aunt didn’t think he should be sent away to school.
Amy joined him just in time for the Quentin/1897 storyline, based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. (That book does feature a weird governess.)
posted by elphaba at 4:45 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
Amy joined him just in time for the Quentin/1897 storyline, based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. (That book does feature a weird governess.)
posted by elphaba at 4:45 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
Best answer: In the musical Spring Awakening one of the teen boys lusts after “my days at the piano with my teacher and her breasts… please god let those apples fall”. The teacher when I saw it was a 50ish woman wearing a stern, matronly dress - not at all what’s usually presented as sexy - and then she did a funny sexy dance in one of the fantasy sequences. The joke was that the kids were so repressed and deprived of normal sexual freedom that unusual things aroused them.
The musical is fairly recent but the source material is old, not sure when the piano teacher thing was added.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:36 PM on September 26, 2022
The musical is fairly recent but the source material is old, not sure when the piano teacher thing was added.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:36 PM on September 26, 2022
Best answer: There's a fair amount of scholarship on Victorian sexuality and pornography, but unfortunately a lot of it is paywalled. I did find one open access thesis on the subject: The Victorian Governess as Spectacle of Pain: A Cultural History of the British Governess as Withered Invalid, Bloody Victim and Sadistic Birching Madam, From 1840 to 1920 by Ruby Ray Daily. Abstract copied below.
--
This thesis examines the celebrity of governesses in British culture during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Victorian governess-mania was as pervasive as it was inexplicable, governesses comprising only a tiny fraction of the population and having little or no ostensible effect on the social, political, or economic landscape. Nevertheless, governesses were omnipresent in Victorian media, from novels and etiquette manuals to paintings, cartoons and pornography. Historians and literary critics have long conjectured about the root cause of popular fixation on the governess, and many have theorized that their cultural resonance owed to the host of contradictions and social conundrums they embodied, from being a ‘lady’ who worked, to being comparable to that bugbear of Victorian society, the prostitute.
However, while previous scholarship has maintained that governess-mania was produced by their peculiarity as social or economic actors, I intend to demonstrate that this nonconformity was extrapolated in visual and literary depictions to signify a more prurient deviance, specifically a fixation on human suffering. This analysis reveals that whether depicted in mainstream press or in nefarious erotica, popular interest in governesses was contoured by a fixation on their perceived relationship to corporal violence. Over the course of the nineteenth century governesses were increasingly portrayed as the victims of a huge range of internal and external threats, such as disease, sterility, assault, murder, rape, and even urban accidents like train crashes or gas leaks. Cast as flagellant birching madams in pornographic fantasy, governesses were also construed as deriving erotic authority through the infliction of pain on others. From imagining the governess as a pitiful victim of brutality or conversely eroticizing her as the stewardess of sadomasochism, all of these constructs rely on the dynamics of violation, on bodies that experience misfortune and bodies that mete that it out. Utilizing a wide array of sources and methodological approaches, I will demonstrate that the Victorian governess was not only popularly correlated with social or sexual irregularity, but that these themes were ultimately circumscribed by a larger preoccupation with the governess as an icon of violence and pain.
posted by aussie_powerlifter at 9:54 PM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]
--
This thesis examines the celebrity of governesses in British culture during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Victorian governess-mania was as pervasive as it was inexplicable, governesses comprising only a tiny fraction of the population and having little or no ostensible effect on the social, political, or economic landscape. Nevertheless, governesses were omnipresent in Victorian media, from novels and etiquette manuals to paintings, cartoons and pornography. Historians and literary critics have long conjectured about the root cause of popular fixation on the governess, and many have theorized that their cultural resonance owed to the host of contradictions and social conundrums they embodied, from being a ‘lady’ who worked, to being comparable to that bugbear of Victorian society, the prostitute.
However, while previous scholarship has maintained that governess-mania was produced by their peculiarity as social or economic actors, I intend to demonstrate that this nonconformity was extrapolated in visual and literary depictions to signify a more prurient deviance, specifically a fixation on human suffering. This analysis reveals that whether depicted in mainstream press or in nefarious erotica, popular interest in governesses was contoured by a fixation on their perceived relationship to corporal violence. Over the course of the nineteenth century governesses were increasingly portrayed as the victims of a huge range of internal and external threats, such as disease, sterility, assault, murder, rape, and even urban accidents like train crashes or gas leaks. Cast as flagellant birching madams in pornographic fantasy, governesses were also construed as deriving erotic authority through the infliction of pain on others. From imagining the governess as a pitiful victim of brutality or conversely eroticizing her as the stewardess of sadomasochism, all of these constructs rely on the dynamics of violation, on bodies that experience misfortune and bodies that mete that it out. Utilizing a wide array of sources and methodological approaches, I will demonstrate that the Victorian governess was not only popularly correlated with social or sexual irregularity, but that these themes were ultimately circumscribed by a larger preoccupation with the governess as an icon of violence and pain.
posted by aussie_powerlifter at 9:54 PM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]
I'm going to ask a clarifying question:
Are you specifically looking for discussion of the sexual scenario "governess taking advantage of the kids she's supposed to be taking care of"? Because while it wouldn't surprise me that exists, I've seen the reverse situation written about much more often - "young woman is hired as a governess and then the father of the family takes advantage of her". Are you open to both situations, or just the former?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:08 AM on September 27, 2022
Are you specifically looking for discussion of the sexual scenario "governess taking advantage of the kids she's supposed to be taking care of"? Because while it wouldn't surprise me that exists, I've seen the reverse situation written about much more often - "young woman is hired as a governess and then the father of the family takes advantage of her". Are you open to both situations, or just the former?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:08 AM on September 27, 2022
Response by poster: Empress: I can research about the station of governess, but I was wondering about any single good documentary. I'm also now more curious how much of the bodice-ripping / Story of O-type "Anon" novels was based in anything factual. The psychology of the whole thing would be fun.
posted by noelpratt2nd at 11:56 AM on September 27, 2022
posted by noelpratt2nd at 11:56 AM on September 27, 2022
Noel: I'm still not clear about something. You say that you are interested in researching the "sexuality" that arose with this arrangement, and in other comments it seems that you are focusing on what sounds like an abusive situation.
I'm asking: in the situations you are hoping to research, who exactly is the abuser, and who exactly is the victim? Or are you open to all scenarios?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:15 PM on September 27, 2022
I'm asking: in the situations you are hoping to research, who exactly is the abuser, and who exactly is the victim? Or are you open to all scenarios?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:15 PM on September 27, 2022
Response by poster: All scenarios. An abusive situation can develop a deviant sexuality, all that. I mean, there's a book about an 18-year-old boy who was sent to the house of a French "governess" (and her maid of course, and all her many lady friends) to be cured of his masculine impudence etc. Ladies of complete leisure, nothing like the other type of poor governesses. So this is so developed, yet so old, and I wonder if any of that kind of chateau ever existed. I don't wish for a demythologizing, because it's such hot fun stuff to read. But something that addressed how the fantasy developed from possible historical incidents, legends, anything, would be fine.
posted by noelpratt2nd at 12:35 PM on September 27, 2022
posted by noelpratt2nd at 12:35 PM on September 27, 2022
Response by poster: Empress, you never came back. Did I offend?
posted by noelpratt2nd at 12:15 PM on October 18, 2022
posted by noelpratt2nd at 12:15 PM on October 18, 2022
Best answer: Nah, I just realized I couldn't think of anything anyway.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:35 PM on October 18, 2022
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:35 PM on October 18, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by praemunire at 2:38 PM on September 26, 2022