The Governess (review)

Sarah Fielding’s 1749 novel about Mrs Teachum and the nine students in her “little female academy” memorably begins with an argument about an apple. But rather than leading to a fall, a display of female capacity for knowledge and virtue results in a quite different outcome than its precedent. Jenny Peace brings her fellow students to feel love and friendship so that when they are presented with a basket of apples, each helps her neighbour to fruit before she “began to taste Pleasures” (59). Given the delights and interest provided in The Governess, it is extremely welcome to have a paperback edition of this first full-length novel for children. Candace Ward offers an array of helpful materials that follow the format for Broadview’s Literary Text Series: a biographical and contextual introduction, a chronology of the author’s life, an annotated text, a select bibliography, and appendices, which include Sarah Trimmer’s 1802 review, correspondence by Sarah Fielding, her remarks on Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, as well as excerpts from educational literature that predates Fielding ( John Locke) and subsequent writings, including those by John Gregory, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Sarah Trimmer.

Ward’s introduction offers readers helpful background information that places the novel within the context of Fielding’s life and writings. A section on Fielding’s life traces the autobiographical aspects of the work, including an account of Fielding’s grandmother Lady Gould, Fielding’s time in boarding school in Salisbury, the female community she established with her three sisters who tragically died within a few months of one another in 1750–51, and her associations with the Bluestocking circle of Barbara Montagu, Sarah Scott, and Elizabeth Carter. In a survey of Fielding’s literary career, Ward points out Fielding’s associations with Richardson and her literary collaborations with her brother Henry Fielding. Ward very deftly establishes Fielding’s position in the rivalry between her brother and her friend Richardson and in contemporary critical response to Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa, demonstrating how, while influenced by both writers, her writings contribute in a significant way to the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century. A third section on female education considers the innovative aspects of the work, as well as its embodiment of Locke’s ideas that learning must offer children pleasure, manifest in its tolerance of fairy tales. The story’s realistic aspects, narrative coherence, and Bildungsroman quality are also noted. Ward makes an excellent and spirited case for the significance of the work and of Fielding’s writing.

At the conclusion of her introduction, Ward mentions Jill E. Grey’s 1968 facsimile reproduction of the first edition and the 1987 Pandora Press reprint for the “Mothers of the Novel” series. Ward calls the Broadview edition a “recovery of Fielding’s innovative educational novel” (37). While this is a very fine edition that updates scholarship and perspectives since Grey’s volume appeared, it falls a bit short of being a superlative one. In making a case for a “recovery” of the novel, it bears comparison with Grey’s. One issue is the matter of choice of copy text. Ward chooses the revised and corrected second edition, but the brief paragraph for the note on the text does not offer any further justification for the choice of edition, or what is either revised or corrected. This is provided by Grey in her bibliography, where she suggests the revisions are minor and consist of alterations in pagination, fewer ornaments, and small changes to the title page, the running titles, and two pages of the text. While this might seem a rather pedantic quibble, especially as Broadview editions are primarily intended for undergraduates, it would be helpful to have a bit more information about editorial choices and whether the choice of copy text is a matter of access to an edition or availability of a rare text (while Grey’s text is from her own library, Ward’s is from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana). A...