The schedule for next week will change somewhat. Disregard the syllabus for next week and do the following readings (questions will be forthcoming):
Monday: The Victorian Governess in Fact and Fiction (pp.158-183)
Wednesday: No Reading/Introduction to Marxism
Friday: Bruce Robbins, "They Don't Count Much, Do They?: The Unfinished History of The Turn of the Screw" (pp.376-389)
1. It definitely makes her a little more sympathetic. Being a governess had to be like being someone who doesn’t have any talents stunt double. You can basically do everything they can and actually more since you do the stunts too, but because you are less famous or less handsome you don’t get the big part. Governesses were stuck in their career for a lack of money, whether they were low or high class. The only way they could hope to move up would be to marry the master. So our governess’s obsession with the master and even Miles, makes a little more sense. It also explains why she doesn’t attach herself to Flora. Either the Governess was a rich woman who was unable to inherit and has now become a governess, so Flora reminds her of her past, or she is a poor woman who hopes to move up and needs a rich man. Either way Flora is of little use to her. It also might explain why she invents ghosts; she is sad and lonely.
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