gkb, I moved your message from the Emma board - I think it would be more appropriate to have it here.

] [snip] and it discusses the isolation of governesses from both the family and the servants, so that they are forced to lead a lonely life ...

Governesses and nannies were in a peculiar position and were indeed not quite in or out of the servant category but more in between, in an awkward way.

Jane Austen wrote, in a letter of April 30th 1811, about a governess hired by her brother Edward: "By this time I suppose she is hard at it, governing away -- poor creature! I pity her, tho' they are my neices."

There’s lots of information in the archives!!! Some bits and pieces:

Secretaries (almost always male) and governesses were in a somewhat anomalous position because they were originally from the genteel classes, but were "hired dependents" in much the same way that servants were. They wouldn't be considered as just another servant, but their exact status in the household would depend on their individual relationship with their employer. (This doesn't apply in the same way to political or government secretaries, who were ambitious young men starting out on the lower rung of the ladder, without compromising their gentility too much...) Written by The Mysterious H.C. (June 25, 2000 )

"A governess, influenced by these practices and principles, will entitle herslef to live on a footing with a family, when thre are no special parties; and she must possess good sense enough not to intrude on that domestic privacy, and persoanl independence, which, without offence, is often desirable. Her own apartment, or that of her pupils ought to be at once the scene of her pleasure and amusement, and if she mingles with the parties of the families, she must, of course, not make heself too familiar wiht the domestic servants." (Quote from The Complete Servant”) Written by Marie-Bernadette (August 13, 2001 ) Written by Marie-Bernadette (August 13, 2001 )

£25 a year is enough to buy some clothes and still leaving a small amount of spending money, but it's not enough to save anything.

] Of course, Jane Fairfax had not yet gone out as a governess. Was her status when living at the Bates's higher or lower than that of an actual working governess?

I think it was higher. She didn't have to work - she was not dependant.

A conversation in "Shirley":
The plight of governesses, from Charlotte Brontë's Shirley

Some extracts from Agnes Porter's diaries:
A GOVERNESS IN THE AGE OF JANE AUSTEN. THE JOURNALS AND LETTERS OF AGNES PORTER.