Governess - in Fiction

In Fiction

Several well-known works of fiction, particularly in the nineteenth century, have focused on governesses.

• Becky Sharp, the main character in William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair, is employed as a governess.
• Violet Hunter, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches," a Sherlock Holmes story.
• Violet Smith, in "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist," a Sherlock Holmes story.
• Henry James's most famous governess is the over-sensitive and perhaps hysterical protagonist in The Turn of the Screw.
• Stiva, the brother of the eponymous heroine in Anna Karenina, had an affair with his children's governess.
• Vera Claythorne in Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None". She was Cyril Hamilton's governess and drowned Cyril so she could marry Hugo Hamilton once he inherited Cyril's fortune. Her employer was Mrs. Hamilton, Cyril's mother.
• Jane Austen's novel Emma opens with the eponymous heroine losing Miss Taylor, the governess who had become a family companion, to marriage with Mr. Weston. Later, Jane Fairfax engages to become a governess to escape a life of genteel poverty and dependence.
• Maria, the main character in The Sound of Music, leaves convent life to become a governess, and later marries her employer Georg von Trapp
• Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Hogfather features a governess named Susan Sto Helit.
• Soap opera Dark Shadows featured the character Victoria Winters as the governess to David Collins.
• Libba Bray's Ann in The Sweet Far Thing briefly to her cousins
• Jane Eyre, the eponymous protagonist in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre, serves as a governess to the ward of her future husband, Edward Fairfax Rochester.
• Dante serves as governess to Stephen Dedalus and his siblings in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
• Hester, a character in Diane Setterfield's novel The Thirteenth Tale', is a governess at the Angelfield estate.
• Arabella Minton a governess in Eva Ibbotson's novel Journey to the River Sea.
• Agnes in Anne Brontë's novel Agnes Grey, different from her sisters' novels, Agnes Grey portrays a more realistic view of what life for a governess was like in Victorian England.
• Sugar, for a time, in Michel Faber's novel The Crimson Petal and the White.