The Governess

Until very recently, scholars depended on visits to rare book rooms to read rare out-of-print works such as The Governess. Students of this work have mainly relied on Jill E. Grey’s 1968 facsimile edition, with its thorough analysis of the work’s publication history, and Mary Cadogan’s 1987 unannotated text; both of these editions are now out-of-print. Today, online versions of rare texts are available at libraries subscribing to particular databases. For example, the 1749, 1751, 1768, and 1781 editions of The Governess can be read on ECCO, Eighteenth Century Collections Online. However, hard copy editions remain practical and efficient for students and scholars alike.

Candace Ward’s introduction and brief chronology summarize Fielding’s life and literary career. Fielding moved in a stimulating circle, associating with many prominent female literary figures such as Elizabeth Carter, Sarah Scott, Jane Collier, Elizabeth Montagu, and Lady Barbara Montagu. She was also acquainted with cultivated men: her own brother Henry, magistrate and author; Samuel Richardson, her friend and publisher; James Harris, philologist; Arthur Collier, her Greek tutor; Ralph Allen, a benefactor; and John Hoadly, poet and dramatist. Ward’s discussion of Fielding’s family background, including her father’s multiple marriages, the role of her grandmother in her upbringing, the legal wrangling over custody and inheritance, and her brother’s adventures, suggests a quarry of stories for her works.

Ward annotates Fielding’s text and the Appendices that follow it, including excerpts from Fielding’s correspondence; a select bibliography concludes the edition. Appendix A, Sarah Trimmer’s 1802 review in The Guardian of Education, seems to be the first critical notice of The Governess. Not in Ward’s edition, however, is Jane Collier’s letter to Samuel Richardson, 4 October 1748 (Barbauld 2:61-64).  Collier had read the proofs of The Governess, and she discusses Mrs. Teachum’s “method of punishing her scholars.” Collier also writes about Fielding’s plan to write a “Book upon Education,” a plan that was never realized. Samuel Richardson, too, anticipates The Governess indirectly by playfully having Mrs. B, the now-married Pamela in Pamela II, write that “Miss Fielding” has read favorably a book of education that she, Pamela, has written for Mr. B (4th ed., 1742, IV: Letter LIX).

What these early notices do not predict is the influence of The Governess, in content and in form, on the many authors who imitated it. On the one hand, Fielding’s technique of storytelling and of recording conversations about behavior is not unique. Baldassare Castiglione’s Courtier, the Arabian Nights, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are early examples. Aesop’s Fables, with its moral following a picture and story, anticipates a Mrs. Teachum. In Fielding, a frame narrative or main story line is punctuated by digressions in which characters tell their own stories and other instructive stories, mirroring the dilemmas in the frame narrative. Conversation about behavior is important; the amending of faults and improvement are possible; attention to reciprocal duties, so central to the early conduct literature, only mildly suggested in the John Gregory selection in Appendix D, is paramount. As Mrs. Teachum observes of the Princess Hebe fairy tale,  “whenever we give way to our Passions, and act contrary to our Duty, we must  be miserable” (142).

Several selections in Ward’s Appendix D, “Excerpts from Eighteenth-Century Educational Literature,” suggest Fielding’s literary legacy. In Thomas Day’s The History of Sandford and Merton (1784), two boys of different backgrounds and contrary dispositions are under the tutelage of Mr. Barlow. In the case of Sarah Trimmer’s Fabulous Histories (1786), the cautionary advice of a Mrs. Teachum comes from Mr. and Mrs. Benson and from the parallel observations of a mother bird to whom Trimmer has given a very human voice. Mrs. Mason, the governess of two girls in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life (1788), leads her charges toward improvement through her wise observations. Another popular imitation not in Ward’s edition is Madame Le Prince de Beaumont’s The Young Misses Magazine (1757) with Mrs. Affable, a governess to seven girls, ages five to thirteen, whose role is quite similar to that of Mrs. Teachum. Instructive fairy tales are not excluded from these dialogues, and the range of information from Bible stories to geography to science is perhaps wider than Fielding’s. Nevertheless, the literary debt is there.

The last selection from Ward’s Appendix D brings us full circle in demonstrating the appeal of Fielding’s work to other authors. Mrs. Mary Martha Butt Sherwood, author of The Governess (1822), directly acknowledges Fielding’s influence and retells Fielding’s story with evangelical fervor and scriptural injunctions; she regrets that Fielding made use of  fairy tales, though Fielding’s Mrs. Teachum is quite clear about their instructive function (84, 86). Nevertheless, the inclusion of fairy tales in Mrs. Sherwood’s version was unavoidable, given the demands of her readership. All in all, the popularity and appeal of The Governess might be measured by its imitators and even in its translations.

Appendix C, “Excerpts from Sarah Fielding’s Remarks on ‘Clarissa’” (1749), offers yet another indication of the importance of The Governess. If Fielding’s Governess  fits into a literary context, it also echoes nearly everything she wrote. Remarks, for example, takes the form of a long letter and describes an evening of conversation where four individuals, in true Governess spirit, dominate the debate over the conduct of the characters in Richardson’s Clarissa.    

Indeed, The Governess, Fielding’s story for young people, may be regarded as an introduction to her other writings for grown-ups in that characters tell stories about themselves or about others for the author’s instructive purposes; digressions, letters, conversations, and monologues are always present. There is not space here to examine specific details, but such techniques are evident from Fielding’s David Simple trilogy (1744, 1747, 1753) to her final work, a translation of  Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates (1762). Even that strange piece The Cry (1754) features debates between Portia of the frame story and the Cry, a chorus-like entity representing the world and all its crudeness.  The rivals in The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia (1757), one prideful in life and now discontented and the other dutiful in life and now at peace, tell their stories from the beyond the grave. The protagonists in The History of the Countess of Dellwyn (1759) and in The History of Ophelia (1760) did not enjoy the wise instruction of a Mrs. Teachum or the prudent friendship of a Jenny Peace, and the results are predictable.

If Sarah Fielding did not publish a “Book upon Education,” all of her literary efforts may be regarded as a long extended analysis of human behavior and character traits, in fact, a series of “Books upon Education.” Candace Ward’s edition of The Governess points us in the right direction toward seeing Sarah Fielding and her creation for young people as a model for other writers and as a reference point for her own writing.