Analysis |
From the Serpent to the Rational Child:
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unless otherwise noted, all page-only references are to the second edition of The Governess published in 1749 immediately after the first edition, accessed through Eighteenth Century Collections on line
Introduction Like many women authors of her time, Sarah Fielding appeared to uphold the expectations of the status quo while at the same time defying them. Venturing into the public male defined marketplace of authorship was a matter of trepidation: many women published anonymously or with apparently modest disclaimers. Fielding was no stranger to this. In the “Advertisement to the Reader” for her immensely successful first novel David Simple, she stated that her only excuse as a woman for “venturing to write at all, is that which really produced this Book; Distress in Her Circumstances” (1744, a2). Her name often did not appear on the frontispiece of her works. However, the cover of The Governess reveals something more than a name. In one simple statement, Fielding acknowledged, accepted and defied newly prevailing educational ideas. The fact that the book was “calculated for the Entertainment and Instruction of Young Ladies in their Education” accepts the idea of making education fun, popularized by John Locke. A book by a woman about a woman teaching girls, however, is one which the male oriented educators of the time would have dismissed as foolish at best. Fielding defied this and forged ahead in her own way. Her ability and confidence in her own ideas and authorial voice are revealed in how she developed her image of the rationally moral child. In this first novel for children, Sarah Fielding guided her audience from an old image of the child to a new one. She began with the a product of original sin to be disciplined and straightened into morality, but ended with a new vision of the child as a being capable of analysis, self-reflection, and of learning moral behavior. She created child characters which adult readers could recognize and children could identify with. She then taught those characters rational control of their emotions and actions. Children who needed to be constantly watched and guided according to old hierarchical methods learn to make their own decisions and govern themselves. Rational assessment and self-control were shown as the key to moral behavior. This book moves the reader from an external “governess” to an internal one.
The Dedication at the beginning of The Governess accomplishes two things. First, it states Fielding’s intent to “cultivate an early Inclination to Benevolence, and a Love of Virtue, in the Minds of Young Women”. (iii) Her purpose was to show her young readers how to develop “amiable Dispositions into Habits…keeping down all rough and boisterous Passions”. (iii) More than an explanation to “the Honorable Mrs. Poyntz”, Fielding was also addressing the adults purchasing her book for their children. She was venturing into an ongoing debate on education for girls and women. While she agreed with the general consensus of the time on educating in order to inculcate moral virtues, she differed subtly in her assertion that these girls would be able to pursue their own development. They would be the ones correcting their own behavior in order to “arrive at true Happiness.” (iii-iv) The culture still mistrusted the ability of women to think rationally and to make good decisions. Fielding’s assumption that girls and women were perfectly capable of both was a subtle but radical shift; one which moved away from male authority to female agency. Fielding pursued this shift throughout The Governess. Secondly, the Dedication outlines Fielding’s use of the “Methods of Fable and Moral which have been recommended by the wisest effectual means of conveying useful instruction”. (iv) Although fables had been endorsed by Locke (perhaps one of the “wisest writers”), they had become somewhat controversial at a time when natural science amounted almost to a national avocation. (What!?! Talking animals? Are you mad? The children will get the wrong idea.) Fielding (as Newberry had before her, and Fenn would after) still believed in metaphor and illustration. She clearly felt that children could understand implications (Rousseau disagreed, Fenn clarified), and learn through the examples embedded in fanciful stories which would appeal to their imaginations. She used the natural inclination of children to tell stories to illustrate the development of rational thinking and self-governance.
The Preface includes examples of these stories as an introduction for the child, beginning their lessons in rationality. This method of telling illustrative stories and interpreting them allows the child to first perceive the lesson imaginatively, learn how to understand it, and then how apply it to themselves through the example of “real” child characters. Fleming noted the necessity for this in his article “The Rise of the Moral Tale” as “The Governess represents, in 1749, a new kind of writing.” Fielding must therefore first “teach her readers how to use her book.” (469) Fielding used the fables of the magpie and the owl to teach the first lessons on attitude before embarking on the book’s journey into rational morality. In the first story, the magpie tries to teach other birds how to build a complete nest. Each bird interrupts at some point, boasting of their knowledge of the next step so that none of them hear the whole of the instructions. Fielding as narrator and author/teacher explained the story’s point as she introduced it, asking the reader to “attend with a Desire of Learning, and not to be apt to fancy yourself too wise to be taught.” (vii-viii) She followed with a warning about false humility or the laziness to “say that you are incapable of understanding it at all” like an owl “drawing a film over his Eyes, to keep himself in his beloved Darkness.” (x) This could also be interpreted as an The initial instruction was finished with a metaphorical story of two girls who cannot keep their room organized enough to find the clothes they want to wear. Fielding argues that reading many books without learning from them constitutes an equal disorder of mind, with the result that trying to find “something to say to the Purpose, they will be hunting in the midst of a Heap of Rubbish.” (xiii) The omnipotent author-teacher has explained the point of each story clearly, giving her young readers the knowledge with which to learn from what they will read through the rest of her book.
Out of Eden: serpents and apples. A Serpent appears at the end of the Preface, when Fielding’s distant authorial presence suddenly gives a strangely harsh warning against maintaining friendships with those who may not be “good enough to deserve your Love” and tempt “you to fail in your duty”. (xiv) To maintain a friendship such as that would be “to nourish in your Bosom Serpents, that in the End with Sting you to Death”. (xiv) This warning echoes the Biblical temptation of Eve by the Serpent and the resulting punishment of death. It is jarring to read so dire a warning at the end of this gentle, rational introduction. Fielding has begun the move out of Eden. She has begun the progression she continues throughout this book from the Puritanical, Biblical child of original sin who must be chastised into morality to the enlightened rational child who can learn how to choose morality. What has not yet been introduced, but will become of prime importance to this movement from the old to the new is the end result of that progression, the fictional model of behavior that will live on as a guide for the other characters even after leaving the school, and live on as a model to young readers: Jenny Peace. A Fray over an apple begins the action of the story. This reveals the girls' faults and need for guidance and begins the development of Jenny as an authority, confessor and model of behavior. The girls meet in a garden on the school grounds to receive a gift of apples from Mrs. Teachum. The echoes of the Garden of Eden are clear: the Biblical apple is fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is, of course, what the children must learn to assess if they are to become capable of making rationally moral decisions on their own. Jenny, the oldest girl, has been left in charge of dividing the apples equally. In spite of all her good efforts, the girls engage in their own version of the fall by arguing over the largest apple, sinking into “strife and anger.” (5) Jenny attempts to keep the peace by throwing it “over a hedge into another garden, where they could not come at it.” (6) This simply escalates the argument into a knock down, hair tearing fight. (6) The girls are consumed with inappropriate selfish desire, and overly emotional, irrational action. They haven’t learned how to control themselves and act both rationally and out of kindness. They are not yet capable of possessing the apple of knowledge. They must first learn how to receive this gift. Throughout The Governess Mrs. Teachum stays in the background, instructing Jenny, but distant from the main action of the plot. Jenny becomes the one who initiates and guides the learning process for the others.
Jenny Peace and Mrs. Teachum are two ends of a spectrum of authority, beginning with the old male based hierarchical authority of Mrs. Teachum, and the new individually based feminine authority of Jenny. Mrs. Teachum started and runs the school. As noted by Lynne Vallone in “The Crisis of Education: Eighteenth-Century Adolescent Fiction for Girls”, Mrs. Teachum is a woman who carries the mantle of male authority (63), as she was initially guided in her education by her husband. She had “placed her chief Pleasure in receiving his Instructions.” (2) Indeed, she wields the authority of punishment, typically cast as “male”. It is Mrs. Teachum who disciplines the girls after the fight over the apples and then takes “away all the apples” (10) as the girls don’t yet deserve them. She embodies the starting point in the shift to feminine authority in education which occurred throughout the eighteenth century as noted by Mitzi Myers in her 1986 article “Impeccable Governesses, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers” for Children’s Literature. (34) Jenny is at the endpoint of that shift. She has been given authority by a female (Mrs. Teachum) and has been taught in the past by “the Instructions of a kind Mama”. (23) who is her main influence. Though Jenny begins as a proxy for Mrs. Teachum, she gradually grows in responsibility and authority throughout the action of the novel. After the fight, it is Jenny who makes peace between the girls: she “drew them round her in a little Arbor, that very Garden which had been the Scene of their Strife.” (19) The Garden and the Arbor are Eden-like, protected spaces. Elise Smith characterized the arbor setting as “a key site for the apprenticeship of children into their adult responsibilities…as the garden wall and gate operated in turn as clear boundaries, especially for girls.” ("Centering the Home-Garden 25) Throughout the book, Jenny becomes the leader of the girl’s interactions in the arbor. This first interaction begins her development in understanding and authority. Jenny encourages the girls to apologize, and to “use as many Endeavors to love, as you have hitherto done to hate each other”. (19-20) Throughout the novel, Jenny grows further into this role as confessor. In this first critical instance, she even gives a kind of absolution. She gives the girls a “basket of apples, which she had purchased” (21) after they have begun the process of repentance for their fighting, which is due in part to her own “Goodness.” (21) The girls now graciously share the apples as “each helped her next Neighbor before she would touch any for herself. “ (21) Jenny is already becoming a model of behavior, and that process continues. Jenny delivers the lessons necessary for the girls to “correct and regulate their own behavior and that of their peers.” (O’Malley qtd. by Fleming 469) Mrs. Teachum remains mainly a distant reference to the old established order and although Jenny maintains an appropriate deference, it is she and the girls who conduct all of their own development. Ultimately, it is a story which moves from past masculine hierarchical dictates to a new feminized, individual decisions making process.
Confession and Illustration form much of the pedagogical approach to the lessons the girls need. The two stories Jenny tells immediately after the fight, for example, both appropriately illustrate the ill effects of self-indulgent emotionality. First, however, she first makes a confession from her own life. She tells about a time when she lost herself in grief for days over the cruel death of a kitten at the hands of neighborhood boys. (32) Her mother convinces her to control her response, telling her to “keep Command enough of yourself to prevent being ruffled by every Accident.” (34) Becoming overly emotional, even in an extreme situation is undesirable, as it clouds judgment and impairs the ability to perform one’s social duties. By this lesson from her mother, Jenny learned to “govern her Passions ever since.” (35) The idea of feminine rationality was still debated during Fielding’s time. How much and what women could learn, and if women could attain control of their passions were ideas still being debated in Fielding’s time. Her answer lies here in Jenny, who learned this so well, that she could remain calm and comforting for her mother while she lay dying of Scarlet Fever. (36) These are extreme personal lessons offered as examples of Jenny’s worth as a model for the others to follow. Fulfilling social duties such as comforting the ill were considered especially important for women and girls during this time. Jenny sets the example and displays her worth. Throughout the book, the girls engage in this type of confession among their peers. Judith Burdan referred to this expansion of confession from the religious to the secular, from the punitive to the explanatory. For the girls, these confessions become “the language of a particular sort of self-definition.” (10) The girls are engaged in a process of rational self-reflection among their peers; each one facing a fault they need to learn how to correct. They are involved in learning how to make their own moral decisions within society. Jenny has become their guide throughout this process: “they all flocked round her, as they now looked on her as the best Friend they had in the World.” (Fielding, 39) Although Jenny occasionally checks with her external Governess, Mrs. Teachum for assurance that she is interpreting stories and events correctly, she is the one leading the others in their development. Fielding used a child as an interpreter and a model of behavior for other children, modeling peer learning. Jenny, who derives her ability and authority from women, is their guide. In The Governess, we find confession, self-reflection, and peer learning within the feminized environment of a girl’s school: we are already very far from the dictates of a distant, male authority.
Fairy Tales and Fables were story formats Fielding used to entertain and instruct. She used fantastic characters to illustrate in large clear strokes behavior for children to emulate or avoid. Patrick Fleming referred to them as “mimetic” or “emetic” characters (471-472). The first fairy tale that Jenny tells after her own confession on the day after the fight is that of “The story of the cruel Giant BARBARICO, the good Giant BENEFICO and the pretty little Dwarf MIGNON.” (40) This story appropriately illustrates the ill effects of greed and self-indulgent over-emotionality. Barbarico is particularly appropriate for the girls at this time, given the greed, jealously and overly emotional reactions of frustration and rage the girls have so recently engaged in. Imagine the most destructive toddler tantrum you’ve ever seen. Now imagine that the toddler is as big as a house and, worse, that he delights in the destruction; lives for it. That is Barbarico, who, “whenever he happened to be disappointed in any of his malicious Purposes, he would stretch his immense Bulk on Top of some high Mountain, and groan, and beat the Earth, and bellow”. (40) His character is greedy, jealous of the happiness of others and out of control. He is a large splashy example of what the girls were guilty of in fighting over one apple amid those they should have shared. His misery and his bellowing tantrums are also good representations of how overwhelming emotions can feel to young children. He illustrates the need for them to learn control. Benefico’s character ultimately provides that control by slaying Barbarico. He represents an individual’s intent to do good things and to correct bad behavior: “His Delight was no less in Acts of Goodness and Benevolence than the other’s was in Cruelty and Mischief.” (41) However, it is telling that he can only accomplish this through the actions of the “pretty little dwarf Mignon.” (40) Mignon remembers and attains the means necessary to incapacitate Barbarico so that Benefico can destroy him. (52-56) His development in becoming brave illustrates the ability to gain control of emotions, in this case, fear. He is small and powerless, and the children in the story can identify with him as the child reader can identify with them. The peer confession and self-evaluation the girls employ are also brave acts. It is only because of Mignon that Benefico can gain control. It is only through brave, rational self-reflection that good intentions can win out and control behavior. In the end, Benefico is asked by the people to become “their Governor, their Father, and their kind Protector.” (63) Though presented paternally as the male/rational control of female/emotional action typical of the time, this story is subtly radical in its feminization - girls being led by a girl. Jenny illustrated control by telling her own story and then guided the girls into telling and learning from theirs. She delivered the whole of the required internal progress in picture form; in a fairy tale whose “protean nature” makes it adaptable enough “to suit any purpose.” (O’Greenby 18) Fielding used the actions of confession and illustration to allow each of the girls to overcome some fault related to the stories they tell each other in the Arbor (a feminized, even womb-like setting). After telling the story of "Caelia and Chloe", for example, Jenny directly interprets it: “Miss Jenny Peace begged them to Observe from this Story, the miserable Effects that attend Deceit and Treachery.” (102) Jenny’s lesson immediately elicits a confession from Miss Lucy Sly, who has been in the habit of “laying my own faults on others.” (103) If not the actual “mother-teacher” (Myers, 34), Jenny has become both guide and exemplar. That she is a child indicates that Fielding casts her as the future, which moves us even further along the spectrum of authority from the old hierarchy to a new individualized morality.
Real Life Events in the characters' lives reinforce the lessons attained through the stories. They illustrate appropriate moral decisions and offer opportunities for appropriate actions. Miss Sukey Jennett’s confession, for example, is soon followed by an encounter which deepens her learning. Sukey tells of having been raised by a fond servant after her father’s death, and being over-indulged to the point of becoming self-centered and proud. Sukey confesses that she had become abusive to a playmate, the daughter of a servant, as she thought “I did her a great Honour by playing with her... I never considered that she could feel.” (77) When the girls meet a woman severely beating her child for lying, Sukey’s former callousness comes into direct contrast with Jenny’s concern, who calls out to the woman “begging her to forbear.” (79) The woman is poor and therefore part of a class that Sukey had dismissed as unworthy of any consideration. Jenny’s burgeoning authority and leadership reveal themselves, as all the girls join her in begging the woman to forgive the child if she promised to change her ways. Jenny’s statement that she detests “Lying…even with the Appearance of a good Intention” (80) elicits a confession from Dolly Friendly about lying to excuse her beloved sister’s misdeeds, in order to please her. Eventually of course, nothing pleases her “I found her always miserable; for she would cry only because she did not know her own Mind.” (82) Her sister Molly had been allowed so much latitude at a young age that she was missing an essential part of rationality: she hadn’t learned discernment and she could not therefore know her own needs or wants. She didn’t know herself. Jenny understands the implications of the encounter with the woman, as well as the confessions of the other girls. She applies her mother’s analysis about mistakes excused by friendship to say that it is not an act of love to “forego their Good for the sake of our own present Pleasure.” (83) She has logically picked apart the elements of these “real life” events to teach the others. She has also modeled appropriate responses and actions in her respect for both the woman they encountered, and her child. She is quickly becoming teacher, example, and authority.
Reading Lessons are also part of Fielding’s pedagogical methods in teaching rational morality. Jenny’s interpretation of Caelia and Chloe is an overt reading lesson, showing her development of this ability. The next tale that Jenny tells in the Arbor is that of
"Princess Hebe", appropriately named for the Greek Goddess of Youth. Fielding recasts and expands the reading lessons and warnings of her Preface in this tale. The naïve Hebe is not yet ready to leave the protected space of the “Placid Grove” and go out into the greater world. She has not yet learned how to ‘read’ characters or situations; or accurately assess danger. Hebe suffers by being drawn out of the safe boundaries set by her mother through the actions of Rozella, who misleadingly presents herself as an innocent Shepherdess. (153-154) The naïve Hebe misreads her character, and suffers because of it. When Rozella persists in leading Hebe away from her duty (honesty, and obedience to her mother) the Serpent of the Preface reappears to confirm her as precisely the sort of false friend Fielding was warning against. Indeed, the lessons of the Preface are restated and expanded here: pride, feeling above learning, above temptation, being led astray by friends: all the early warnings are played out here in Hebe’s mistakes. For example, Rozella instantly endeared herself to Hebe by appealing to her pride, flattering her “Beauty and Widsom.” (155) Just as Fielding used the Preface as a lesson in how to read her book, she used this tale as a lesson in how to ‘read’ the world. Rozella succeeds in tempting the princess, whom she tellingly calls “little Hebe” (154), by specifically preying on her lack of rhetorical ability. She presents arguments fraught with “many a Fallacy to prove her point.” (155) Hebe’s continued misunderstandings of situations throughout the tale provide one of Fielding’s examples of misreading and the correction of misreading which Emily Friedman noted in “Remarks on Richardson: Sarah Fielding and the Rational Reader.” (312), furthering what she called Fielding’s promotion of “rational, cognitive reading practices”. (310-311) Tales such as these accomplish more than to support the status quo of duty and obedience: they form a necessary part of building an individualized ability to rationally analyze situations. Hebe must obey her mother who maintains a logical, rational review of events from the safety of their “Placid Grove”. This is a radically feminized version of intellect. Indeed, the whole world of The Governess and the stories within it (beyond the first fairy tale) take place in a totally feminized world. Hebe’s father is literally merely a picture through most of the story. Although the telling of this story is interrupted by some soldiers marching beyond the garden gate, the girls are only momentarily interested in them. The second troop passing is merely the “same thing we have just looked at before.” (171) Male hierarchy, represented by soldiers and Hebe’s father, are in some sense the past. In placing these lessons with Jenny and her peers, Fielding continued to move from old masculine, top-down societal moral interpretations to feminized, individualized decisions.
Jenny Peace grows in authority throughout The Governess while the other girls shed faults. Theirs is a process of correction while hers is a process of growth in agency. She eventually becomes the example for the other girls even after she leaves the school. The process begins with Jenny’s life story, in which she gains rational control over her own emotions through her mother’s guidance. After her mother’s death, when Jenny comes to the school, she immediately becomes Mrs. Teachum’s proxy in guiding the girls: she leads the story-telling in the Arbor, interprets the stories, and guides the other girl’s confessions. She becomes both a guide to making rationally moral decisions, and an example of such decisions in action. At the beginning of this process, Mrs. Teachum specifically asks Jenny to listen to the girl’s stories as they may be more comfortable speaking to another child. Although this confessional duty is rooted in Mrs. Teachum’s authority, (Jenny reports in toward the book’s end), Jenny’s interpretations and absolution are not. Similarly, her story-telling in the arbor though initially sanctioned by Mrs. Teachum, leads to Jenny’s leadership, as the girls “were attentive to what Miss Jenny should propose to them for their Amusement till Dinner-Time.” (106) Jenny then leads them into telling their own stories, initiating the process of peer confession and self-examination. One girl, Patty Lockit states this directly when she thanks Jenny for “putting me into a way of examining my Heart, and reflecting on my own Actions.” (109) The girls thank Jenny in this way several times throughout the course of the book. Jenny even extends her authority to the outside world when she intervenes to plead for clemency with the poor woman beating her child. Toward the end of the book, the girls read a popular (and somewhat controversial play) together. Mrs. Teachum asks Jenny to ascertain “the chief Moral to be drawn from the Play you have just read.” (203) Mrs. Teachum continues to explain the explanation for several pages, but ultimately she has in effect handed her authority over to Jenny. Jenny continues with the last child’s confession and is given complete charge of the children for the next day’s activities. She even leads the others on an excursion to see a “fine House”. (221) In fact, throughout the book, it is Jenny who deals most directly with the other children. Mrs. Teachum is often only a distant presence, one who often only serves to affirm Jenny’s actions. At the end of the book, if any of the students began to “harbor in her Breast a rising Passions, the Name and Story of Jenny Peace soon gained her attention and left her without any other Desire than to emulate Miss Jenny’s virtues.” (245) In essence, the girls ask themselves what Jenny would do.
Conclusions: The pattern of stories within the overall “frame narrative” of school life in The Governess was ground breaking, unusual, and part of the “primary importance of this work.” (Fleming, 469) The technique of using fairy tales and fables allowed Fielding to draw a clear picture which could then be brought down to smaller character-specific applications, easy for a child to identify with. Sarah Fielding used these stories and the development of Jenny Peace to lead the reader from the child of original sin to the rationally moral child. She used biblical references like the serpent, the fight over the apple and he setting in a Garden to evoke Eden, then guided the reader out into a new world. She employed the character of Jenny Peace to teach and model the methods of a new rational basis for moral decisions. Mrs. Teachum, reflecting a male based authority, remains in the background, out of the action, in essence handing over the guiding authority to Jenny. Jenny has derived that authority and her ability to assess situations and to make good decisions from women (her mother and from Mrs. Teachum). It is Jenny who guides the girls through the interpretation of stories to illustrate moral lessons, and who leads the process of secularized confession and self-examination to teach them how to maintain self-control. She is the main guide for the girls on how to read situations and apply what they learned from stories to real life . Jenny guides the lessons Fielding uses to teach her readers (girls who would identify with Jenny) how to think in the rational ways that lead to moral actions. The idea of teaching morality to children, especially girls (seen in the Puritanical model as particularly in need of such instruction), was not new or unique to Fielding. Almost everything else about The Governess was, particularly the new, secularized, feminized authority and almost Christ like model of behavior: Jenny Peace.
Introduction Like many women authors of her time, Sarah Fielding appeared to uphold the expectations of the status quo while at the same time defying them. Venturing into the public male defined marketplace of authorship was a matter of trepidation: many women published anonymously or with apparently modest disclaimers. Fielding was no stranger to this. In the “Advertisement to the Reader” for her immensely successful first novel David Simple, she stated that her only excuse as a woman for “venturing to write at all, is that which really produced this Book; Distress in Her Circumstances” (1744, a2). Her name often did not appear on the frontispiece of her works. However, the cover of The Governess reveals something more than a name. In one simple statement, Fielding acknowledged, accepted and defied newly prevailing educational ideas. The fact that the book was “calculated for the Entertainment and Instruction of Young Ladies in their Education” accepts the idea of making education fun, popularized by John Locke. A book by a woman about a woman teaching girls, however, is one which the male oriented educators of the time would have dismissed as foolish at best. Fielding defied this and forged ahead in her own way. Her ability and confidence in her own ideas and authorial voice are revealed in how she developed her image of the rationally moral child. In this first novel for children, Sarah Fielding guided her audience from an old image of the child to a new one. She began with the a product of original sin to be disciplined and straightened into morality, but ended with a new vision of the child as a being capable of analysis, self-reflection, and of learning moral behavior. She created child characters which adult readers could recognize and children could identify with. She then taught those characters rational control of their emotions and actions. Children who needed to be constantly watched and guided according to old hierarchical methods learn to make their own decisions and govern themselves. Rational assessment and self-control were shown as the key to moral behavior. This book moves the reader from an external “governess” to an internal one.
The Dedication at the beginning of The Governess accomplishes two things. First, it states Fielding’s intent to “cultivate an early Inclination to Benevolence, and a Love of Virtue, in the Minds of Young Women”. (iii) Her purpose was to show her young readers how to develop “amiable Dispositions into Habits…keeping down all rough and boisterous Passions”. (iii) More than an explanation to “the Honorable Mrs. Poyntz”, Fielding was also addressing the adults purchasing her book for their children. She was venturing into an ongoing debate on education for girls and women. While she agreed with the general consensus of the time on educating in order to inculcate moral virtues, she differed subtly in her assertion that these girls would be able to pursue their own development. They would be the ones correcting their own behavior in order to “arrive at true Happiness.” (iii-iv) The culture still mistrusted the ability of women to think rationally and to make good decisions. Fielding’s assumption that girls and women were perfectly capable of both was a subtle but radical shift; one which moved away from male authority to female agency. Fielding pursued this shift throughout The Governess. Secondly, the Dedication outlines Fielding’s use of the “Methods of Fable and Moral which have been recommended by the wisest effectual means of conveying useful instruction”. (iv) Although fables had been endorsed by Locke (perhaps one of the “wisest writers”), they had become somewhat controversial at a time when natural science amounted almost to a national avocation. (What!?! Talking animals? Are you mad? The children will get the wrong idea.) Fielding (as Newberry had before her, and Fenn would after) still believed in metaphor and illustration. She clearly felt that children could understand implications (Rousseau disagreed, Fenn clarified), and learn through the examples embedded in fanciful stories which would appeal to their imaginations. She used the natural inclination of children to tell stories to illustrate the development of rational thinking and self-governance.
The Preface includes examples of these stories as an introduction for the child, beginning their lessons in rationality. This method of telling illustrative stories and interpreting them allows the child to first perceive the lesson imaginatively, learn how to understand it, and then how apply it to themselves through the example of “real” child characters. Fleming noted the necessity for this in his article “The Rise of the Moral Tale” as “The Governess represents, in 1749, a new kind of writing.” Fielding must therefore first “teach her readers how to use her book.” (469) Fielding used the fables of the magpie and the owl to teach the first lessons on attitude before embarking on the book’s journey into rational morality. In the first story, the magpie tries to teach other birds how to build a complete nest. Each bird interrupts at some point, boasting of their knowledge of the next step so that none of them hear the whole of the instructions. Fielding as narrator and author/teacher explained the story’s point as she introduced it, asking the reader to “attend with a Desire of Learning, and not to be apt to fancy yourself too wise to be taught.” (vii-viii) She followed with a warning about false humility or the laziness to “say that you are incapable of understanding it at all” like an owl “drawing a film over his Eyes, to keep himself in his beloved Darkness.” (x) This could also be interpreted as an The initial instruction was finished with a metaphorical story of two girls who cannot keep their room organized enough to find the clothes they want to wear. Fielding argues that reading many books without learning from them constitutes an equal disorder of mind, with the result that trying to find “something to say to the Purpose, they will be hunting in the midst of a Heap of Rubbish.” (xiii) The omnipotent author-teacher has explained the point of each story clearly, giving her young readers the knowledge with which to learn from what they will read through the rest of her book.
Out of Eden: serpents and apples. A Serpent appears at the end of the Preface, when Fielding’s distant authorial presence suddenly gives a strangely harsh warning against maintaining friendships with those who may not be “good enough to deserve your Love” and tempt “you to fail in your duty”. (xiv) To maintain a friendship such as that would be “to nourish in your Bosom Serpents, that in the End with Sting you to Death”. (xiv) This warning echoes the Biblical temptation of Eve by the Serpent and the resulting punishment of death. It is jarring to read so dire a warning at the end of this gentle, rational introduction. Fielding has begun the move out of Eden. She has begun the progression she continues throughout this book from the Puritanical, Biblical child of original sin who must be chastised into morality to the enlightened rational child who can learn how to choose morality. What has not yet been introduced, but will become of prime importance to this movement from the old to the new is the end result of that progression, the fictional model of behavior that will live on as a guide for the other characters even after leaving the school, and live on as a model to young readers: Jenny Peace. A Fray over an apple begins the action of the story. This reveals the girls' faults and need for guidance and begins the development of Jenny as an authority, confessor and model of behavior. The girls meet in a garden on the school grounds to receive a gift of apples from Mrs. Teachum. The echoes of the Garden of Eden are clear: the Biblical apple is fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is, of course, what the children must learn to assess if they are to become capable of making rationally moral decisions on their own. Jenny, the oldest girl, has been left in charge of dividing the apples equally. In spite of all her good efforts, the girls engage in their own version of the fall by arguing over the largest apple, sinking into “strife and anger.” (5) Jenny attempts to keep the peace by throwing it “over a hedge into another garden, where they could not come at it.” (6) This simply escalates the argument into a knock down, hair tearing fight. (6) The girls are consumed with inappropriate selfish desire, and overly emotional, irrational action. They haven’t learned how to control themselves and act both rationally and out of kindness. They are not yet capable of possessing the apple of knowledge. They must first learn how to receive this gift. Throughout The Governess Mrs. Teachum stays in the background, instructing Jenny, but distant from the main action of the plot. Jenny becomes the one who initiates and guides the learning process for the others.
Jenny Peace and Mrs. Teachum are two ends of a spectrum of authority, beginning with the old male based hierarchical authority of Mrs. Teachum, and the new individually based feminine authority of Jenny. Mrs. Teachum started and runs the school. As noted by Lynne Vallone in “The Crisis of Education: Eighteenth-Century Adolescent Fiction for Girls”, Mrs. Teachum is a woman who carries the mantle of male authority (63), as she was initially guided in her education by her husband. She had “placed her chief Pleasure in receiving his Instructions.” (2) Indeed, she wields the authority of punishment, typically cast as “male”. It is Mrs. Teachum who disciplines the girls after the fight over the apples and then takes “away all the apples” (10) as the girls don’t yet deserve them. She embodies the starting point in the shift to feminine authority in education which occurred throughout the eighteenth century as noted by Mitzi Myers in her 1986 article “Impeccable Governesses, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers” for Children’s Literature. (34) Jenny is at the endpoint of that shift. She has been given authority by a female (Mrs. Teachum) and has been taught in the past by “the Instructions of a kind Mama”. (23) who is her main influence. Though Jenny begins as a proxy for Mrs. Teachum, she gradually grows in responsibility and authority throughout the action of the novel. After the fight, it is Jenny who makes peace between the girls: she “drew them round her in a little Arbor, that very Garden which had been the Scene of their Strife.” (19) The Garden and the Arbor are Eden-like, protected spaces. Elise Smith characterized the arbor setting as “a key site for the apprenticeship of children into their adult responsibilities…as the garden wall and gate operated in turn as clear boundaries, especially for girls.” ("Centering the Home-Garden 25) Throughout the book, Jenny becomes the leader of the girl’s interactions in the arbor. This first interaction begins her development in understanding and authority. Jenny encourages the girls to apologize, and to “use as many Endeavors to love, as you have hitherto done to hate each other”. (19-20) Throughout the novel, Jenny grows further into this role as confessor. In this first critical instance, she even gives a kind of absolution. She gives the girls a “basket of apples, which she had purchased” (21) after they have begun the process of repentance for their fighting, which is due in part to her own “Goodness.” (21) The girls now graciously share the apples as “each helped her next Neighbor before she would touch any for herself. “ (21) Jenny is already becoming a model of behavior, and that process continues. Jenny delivers the lessons necessary for the girls to “correct and regulate their own behavior and that of their peers.” (O’Malley qtd. by Fleming 469) Mrs. Teachum remains mainly a distant reference to the old established order and although Jenny maintains an appropriate deference, it is she and the girls who conduct all of their own development. Ultimately, it is a story which moves from past masculine hierarchical dictates to a new feminized, individual decisions making process.
Confession and Illustration form much of the pedagogical approach to the lessons the girls need. The two stories Jenny tells immediately after the fight, for example, both appropriately illustrate the ill effects of self-indulgent emotionality. First, however, she first makes a confession from her own life. She tells about a time when she lost herself in grief for days over the cruel death of a kitten at the hands of neighborhood boys. (32) Her mother convinces her to control her response, telling her to “keep Command enough of yourself to prevent being ruffled by every Accident.” (34) Becoming overly emotional, even in an extreme situation is undesirable, as it clouds judgment and impairs the ability to perform one’s social duties. By this lesson from her mother, Jenny learned to “govern her Passions ever since.” (35) The idea of feminine rationality was still debated during Fielding’s time. How much and what women could learn, and if women could attain control of their passions were ideas still being debated in Fielding’s time. Her answer lies here in Jenny, who learned this so well, that she could remain calm and comforting for her mother while she lay dying of Scarlet Fever. (36) These are extreme personal lessons offered as examples of Jenny’s worth as a model for the others to follow. Fulfilling social duties such as comforting the ill were considered especially important for women and girls during this time. Jenny sets the example and displays her worth. Throughout the book, the girls engage in this type of confession among their peers. Judith Burdan referred to this expansion of confession from the religious to the secular, from the punitive to the explanatory. For the girls, these confessions become “the language of a particular sort of self-definition.” (10) The girls are engaged in a process of rational self-reflection among their peers; each one facing a fault they need to learn how to correct. They are involved in learning how to make their own moral decisions within society. Jenny has become their guide throughout this process: “they all flocked round her, as they now looked on her as the best Friend they had in the World.” (Fielding, 39) Although Jenny occasionally checks with her external Governess, Mrs. Teachum for assurance that she is interpreting stories and events correctly, she is the one leading the others in their development. Fielding used a child as an interpreter and a model of behavior for other children, modeling peer learning. Jenny, who derives her ability and authority from women, is their guide. In The Governess, we find confession, self-reflection, and peer learning within the feminized environment of a girl’s school: we are already very far from the dictates of a distant, male authority.
Fairy Tales and Fables were story formats Fielding used to entertain and instruct. She used fantastic characters to illustrate in large clear strokes behavior for children to emulate or avoid. Patrick Fleming referred to them as “mimetic” or “emetic” characters (471-472). The first fairy tale that Jenny tells after her own confession on the day after the fight is that of “The story of the cruel Giant BARBARICO, the good Giant BENEFICO and the pretty little Dwarf MIGNON.” (40) This story appropriately illustrates the ill effects of greed and self-indulgent over-emotionality. Barbarico is particularly appropriate for the girls at this time, given the greed, jealously and overly emotional reactions of frustration and rage the girls have so recently engaged in. Imagine the most destructive toddler tantrum you’ve ever seen. Now imagine that the toddler is as big as a house and, worse, that he delights in the destruction; lives for it. That is Barbarico, who, “whenever he happened to be disappointed in any of his malicious Purposes, he would stretch his immense Bulk on Top of some high Mountain, and groan, and beat the Earth, and bellow”. (40) His character is greedy, jealous of the happiness of others and out of control. He is a large splashy example of what the girls were guilty of in fighting over one apple amid those they should have shared. His misery and his bellowing tantrums are also good representations of how overwhelming emotions can feel to young children. He illustrates the need for them to learn control. Benefico’s character ultimately provides that control by slaying Barbarico. He represents an individual’s intent to do good things and to correct bad behavior: “His Delight was no less in Acts of Goodness and Benevolence than the other’s was in Cruelty and Mischief.” (41) However, it is telling that he can only accomplish this through the actions of the “pretty little dwarf Mignon.” (40) Mignon remembers and attains the means necessary to incapacitate Barbarico so that Benefico can destroy him. (52-56) His development in becoming brave illustrates the ability to gain control of emotions, in this case, fear. He is small and powerless, and the children in the story can identify with him as the child reader can identify with them. The peer confession and self-evaluation the girls employ are also brave acts. It is only because of Mignon that Benefico can gain control. It is only through brave, rational self-reflection that good intentions can win out and control behavior. In the end, Benefico is asked by the people to become “their Governor, their Father, and their kind Protector.” (63) Though presented paternally as the male/rational control of female/emotional action typical of the time, this story is subtly radical in its feminization - girls being led by a girl. Jenny illustrated control by telling her own story and then guided the girls into telling and learning from theirs. She delivered the whole of the required internal progress in picture form; in a fairy tale whose “protean nature” makes it adaptable enough “to suit any purpose.” (O’Greenby 18) Fielding used the actions of confession and illustration to allow each of the girls to overcome some fault related to the stories they tell each other in the Arbor (a feminized, even womb-like setting). After telling the story of "Caelia and Chloe", for example, Jenny directly interprets it: “Miss Jenny Peace begged them to Observe from this Story, the miserable Effects that attend Deceit and Treachery.” (102) Jenny’s lesson immediately elicits a confession from Miss Lucy Sly, who has been in the habit of “laying my own faults on others.” (103) If not the actual “mother-teacher” (Myers, 34), Jenny has become both guide and exemplar. That she is a child indicates that Fielding casts her as the future, which moves us even further along the spectrum of authority from the old hierarchy to a new individualized morality.
Real Life Events in the characters' lives reinforce the lessons attained through the stories. They illustrate appropriate moral decisions and offer opportunities for appropriate actions. Miss Sukey Jennett’s confession, for example, is soon followed by an encounter which deepens her learning. Sukey tells of having been raised by a fond servant after her father’s death, and being over-indulged to the point of becoming self-centered and proud. Sukey confesses that she had become abusive to a playmate, the daughter of a servant, as she thought “I did her a great Honour by playing with her... I never considered that she could feel.” (77) When the girls meet a woman severely beating her child for lying, Sukey’s former callousness comes into direct contrast with Jenny’s concern, who calls out to the woman “begging her to forbear.” (79) The woman is poor and therefore part of a class that Sukey had dismissed as unworthy of any consideration. Jenny’s burgeoning authority and leadership reveal themselves, as all the girls join her in begging the woman to forgive the child if she promised to change her ways. Jenny’s statement that she detests “Lying…even with the Appearance of a good Intention” (80) elicits a confession from Dolly Friendly about lying to excuse her beloved sister’s misdeeds, in order to please her. Eventually of course, nothing pleases her “I found her always miserable; for she would cry only because she did not know her own Mind.” (82) Her sister Molly had been allowed so much latitude at a young age that she was missing an essential part of rationality: she hadn’t learned discernment and she could not therefore know her own needs or wants. She didn’t know herself. Jenny understands the implications of the encounter with the woman, as well as the confessions of the other girls. She applies her mother’s analysis about mistakes excused by friendship to say that it is not an act of love to “forego their Good for the sake of our own present Pleasure.” (83) She has logically picked apart the elements of these “real life” events to teach the others. She has also modeled appropriate responses and actions in her respect for both the woman they encountered, and her child. She is quickly becoming teacher, example, and authority.
Reading Lessons are also part of Fielding’s pedagogical methods in teaching rational morality. Jenny’s interpretation of Caelia and Chloe is an overt reading lesson, showing her development of this ability. The next tale that Jenny tells in the Arbor is that of
"Princess Hebe", appropriately named for the Greek Goddess of Youth. Fielding recasts and expands the reading lessons and warnings of her Preface in this tale. The naïve Hebe is not yet ready to leave the protected space of the “Placid Grove” and go out into the greater world. She has not yet learned how to ‘read’ characters or situations; or accurately assess danger. Hebe suffers by being drawn out of the safe boundaries set by her mother through the actions of Rozella, who misleadingly presents herself as an innocent Shepherdess. (153-154) The naïve Hebe misreads her character, and suffers because of it. When Rozella persists in leading Hebe away from her duty (honesty, and obedience to her mother) the Serpent of the Preface reappears to confirm her as precisely the sort of false friend Fielding was warning against. Indeed, the lessons of the Preface are restated and expanded here: pride, feeling above learning, above temptation, being led astray by friends: all the early warnings are played out here in Hebe’s mistakes. For example, Rozella instantly endeared herself to Hebe by appealing to her pride, flattering her “Beauty and Widsom.” (155) Just as Fielding used the Preface as a lesson in how to read her book, she used this tale as a lesson in how to ‘read’ the world. Rozella succeeds in tempting the princess, whom she tellingly calls “little Hebe” (154), by specifically preying on her lack of rhetorical ability. She presents arguments fraught with “many a Fallacy to prove her point.” (155) Hebe’s continued misunderstandings of situations throughout the tale provide one of Fielding’s examples of misreading and the correction of misreading which Emily Friedman noted in “Remarks on Richardson: Sarah Fielding and the Rational Reader.” (312), furthering what she called Fielding’s promotion of “rational, cognitive reading practices”. (310-311) Tales such as these accomplish more than to support the status quo of duty and obedience: they form a necessary part of building an individualized ability to rationally analyze situations. Hebe must obey her mother who maintains a logical, rational review of events from the safety of their “Placid Grove”. This is a radically feminized version of intellect. Indeed, the whole world of The Governess and the stories within it (beyond the first fairy tale) take place in a totally feminized world. Hebe’s father is literally merely a picture through most of the story. Although the telling of this story is interrupted by some soldiers marching beyond the garden gate, the girls are only momentarily interested in them. The second troop passing is merely the “same thing we have just looked at before.” (171) Male hierarchy, represented by soldiers and Hebe’s father, are in some sense the past. In placing these lessons with Jenny and her peers, Fielding continued to move from old masculine, top-down societal moral interpretations to feminized, individualized decisions.
Jenny Peace grows in authority throughout The Governess while the other girls shed faults. Theirs is a process of correction while hers is a process of growth in agency. She eventually becomes the example for the other girls even after she leaves the school. The process begins with Jenny’s life story, in which she gains rational control over her own emotions through her mother’s guidance. After her mother’s death, when Jenny comes to the school, she immediately becomes Mrs. Teachum’s proxy in guiding the girls: she leads the story-telling in the Arbor, interprets the stories, and guides the other girl’s confessions. She becomes both a guide to making rationally moral decisions, and an example of such decisions in action. At the beginning of this process, Mrs. Teachum specifically asks Jenny to listen to the girl’s stories as they may be more comfortable speaking to another child. Although this confessional duty is rooted in Mrs. Teachum’s authority, (Jenny reports in toward the book’s end), Jenny’s interpretations and absolution are not. Similarly, her story-telling in the arbor though initially sanctioned by Mrs. Teachum, leads to Jenny’s leadership, as the girls “were attentive to what Miss Jenny should propose to them for their Amusement till Dinner-Time.” (106) Jenny then leads them into telling their own stories, initiating the process of peer confession and self-examination. One girl, Patty Lockit states this directly when she thanks Jenny for “putting me into a way of examining my Heart, and reflecting on my own Actions.” (109) The girls thank Jenny in this way several times throughout the course of the book. Jenny even extends her authority to the outside world when she intervenes to plead for clemency with the poor woman beating her child. Toward the end of the book, the girls read a popular (and somewhat controversial play) together. Mrs. Teachum asks Jenny to ascertain “the chief Moral to be drawn from the Play you have just read.” (203) Mrs. Teachum continues to explain the explanation for several pages, but ultimately she has in effect handed her authority over to Jenny. Jenny continues with the last child’s confession and is given complete charge of the children for the next day’s activities. She even leads the others on an excursion to see a “fine House”. (221) In fact, throughout the book, it is Jenny who deals most directly with the other children. Mrs. Teachum is often only a distant presence, one who often only serves to affirm Jenny’s actions. At the end of the book, if any of the students began to “harbor in her Breast a rising Passions, the Name and Story of Jenny Peace soon gained her attention and left her without any other Desire than to emulate Miss Jenny’s virtues.” (245) In essence, the girls ask themselves what Jenny would do.
Conclusions: The pattern of stories within the overall “frame narrative” of school life in The Governess was ground breaking, unusual, and part of the “primary importance of this work.” (Fleming, 469) The technique of using fairy tales and fables allowed Fielding to draw a clear picture which could then be brought down to smaller character-specific applications, easy for a child to identify with. Sarah Fielding used these stories and the development of Jenny Peace to lead the reader from the child of original sin to the rationally moral child. She used biblical references like the serpent, the fight over the apple and he setting in a Garden to evoke Eden, then guided the reader out into a new world. She employed the character of Jenny Peace to teach and model the methods of a new rational basis for moral decisions. Mrs. Teachum, reflecting a male based authority, remains in the background, out of the action, in essence handing over the guiding authority to Jenny. Jenny has derived that authority and her ability to assess situations and to make good decisions from women (her mother and from Mrs. Teachum). It is Jenny who guides the girls through the interpretation of stories to illustrate moral lessons, and who leads the process of secularized confession and self-examination to teach them how to maintain self-control. She is the main guide for the girls on how to read situations and apply what they learned from stories to real life . Jenny guides the lessons Fielding uses to teach her readers (girls who would identify with Jenny) how to think in the rational ways that lead to moral actions. The idea of teaching morality to children, especially girls (seen in the Puritanical model as particularly in need of such instruction), was not new or unique to Fielding. Almost everything else about The Governess was, particularly the new, secularized, feminized authority and almost Christ like model of behavior: Jenny Peace.