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• Title: Identifying Jane Austen's "Boarding-School": A Proposed Author for the Governess; Or, The Boarding School Dissected (Miscellany) (Critical Essay)
• Author : Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal
• Release Date : January 01, 2009
• Genre: History,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,Language Arts & Disciplines,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 70 KB

Description

IN AN 1801 LETTER TO HER SISTER Cassandra, Jane Austen writes, "Fanny shall have the Boarding-school as soon as her Papa gives me an opportunity of sending it--& I do not know whether I may not by that time have worked myself up into so generous a fit as to give it to her for ever" (21-22 January 1801). While there are a number of "Boarding-school" texts to which Austen might be referring, including Sarah Fielding's The Governess, or, Little Female Academy (1741), Dorothy Kilner's Anecdotes of a Boarding School (1792), or even the anonymously-published The Governess; or Evening Amusements at a Boarding School(1800) (Letters 376), Vivien Jones argues that the likeliest candidate for the treasured text which Austen intends to pass on to her eight-year-old niece is The Governess; or, the Boarding School Dissected (234). Jones's conclusion is convincing in that this play was published during Austen's childhood--in fact, while she was attending Mrs. La Tournelle's school at Reading (Le Faye xx)--and that the title contains the words "Boarding-school" (Jones 234). As I will explore here, a new proposal of an author for The Governess; or, the Boarding School Dissected informs the many consistencies between the play and Austen's life and work; these consistencies further show how the late eighteenth-century boarding school's poor instruction and emphasis on popular "accomplishments" were symptoms of its social and financial vulnerability. This "dramatic original in three acts" published in 1785 is a well-cited source in current studies of late eighteenth-century girls' education. (1) While The Governess; or, the Boarding School Dissected was never performed on the London stage (Baker 270), the direct addresses to parents throughout the play, the cast of characters--a governess, a teacher in training and a class of schoolgirls--and the play's intention, stated on its title page, to "form the Mind, and improve the Understanding," suggest that this didactic work of children's literature was meant for performance by students at a "Female Academy," in fact, at one much like Mrs. La Tournelle's, which boasted "Scenes for Theatrical Exhibitions" (Le Faye 52).

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