Abstract
This paper deals with conflict between governesses and their employers, explaining purification of modern families in the nineteenth-century England. The "governess question" emerged from the excess supply of governesses those days, and used to be treated as an issue of their economic hardship.It was also interpreted as a matter containing their delicate status standing over the boundaries both among classes and between gender roles.These problems were mentioned in numerous periodicals particularly in feminism magazines in the mid-nineteenth century.However, in closely reading what is now called typical articles among those appearing in the periodicals, an important factor turns up that is more fundamental in the matter of governesses; that is, uneasiness of the middle-class in doubt if a governess might be trying to acquire its position in the employer′s family.Such an aspect in the matter of governesses should not be lumped together in the problem of border transgression of the class.A threat to cross the family boundary is considered more dangerous than crossing the class border.The reason is that a governess seems to aim at the mother′s position rather than just a position as a member of the family.She disturbs the order itself of a family relation as well as simply violating the boundary.The governess is a "tabooed woman" as referred in the famous paper on governesses(by Elizabeth Rigby)in 1848.The anxiety of the middle class over the position of the governesses was caused by their role taking a mother′s place and by the change in the "family" concept in the midnineteenth century.The word "family" came to exclude servants out of its category and to indicate a group consisting of a nuclear family.The position of a governess became ambiguous as the concept of a "family" changed.To relieve governesses from their economic distress, feminist journals recommended that a contract be made between a governess and the employer, stipulating the wages and working conditions.However, making the contract simply means to place the governess in the context of a modern employment relationship.Conse-quently, the contract was instrumental in shifting governesses from their employer′s family to outsiders.In other words, the "family" excluded the existence residing in the boundary and headed in the direction of further purifying itself.
