Charlotte Brontë's outcry might seem exaggerated
to us, but Victorian novels and paintings mostly do not picture the position of a governess in a positive way. Even if it might seem unusual, as the governess is a servant, a mere shade in the house of a family, she has yet caught the attention of artists. Maybe it is precisely her inconspicuous but obstinate presence that attracts the attention. Although she has an acknowledged status, she does not completely fit in her environment. She is different from other servants concerning social rank and education, and though belonging to the same social class (sometimes even belonging to a higher social level, being an aristocrat working in the house of a "bourgeois") as the family, she has to work out of economic reasons.
Thus, as in reality, the governesses in Agnes Grey and No Name have to work because their fathers respectively got ruined or died. Yet for one of them Agnes Grey there is another reason: "To go out into the......
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