The School of One Scholar: Schoolmistress-Schoolboy Romance in the Nineteenth-Century School Story

Teaching became an overwhelmingly female profession in the nineteenth century thanks to perceived likenesses between teaching and mothering. School stories that feature romances between female teachers and their male students, however, challenge this mother-teacher ideal, as well as age, gender, and courtship norms. In these mid- to late nineteenth-century stories, romantic love becomes part of the educational process, as lover-teachers help boys to become men worthy of marrying them. Though school romances ultimately return a woman worker to the home, in these fictions a bit of the school—and the schoolmistress’s power—comes home with her.