Hate Your Job? Read Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres

Do you ever fantasize about life in a Victorian country house? When you read Jane Eyre, did you imagine yourself in Jane's place, the plain little governess who wins the heart of her rich and handsome employer? Did you think being a governess could be romantic? Well, you won't after reading Ruth Brandon's book, Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres.

Brandon's study of the lives of English governesses over the span of a century (from the late eighteenth century to 1869, the establishment of Girton College for women at Cambridge Universty) reveals the snobbery, poverty and uncertainty that plagued the lives of women who taught the children of the wealthy and middle-class. Brandon's case studies include some famous governesses (the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Lord Byron's lover, Claire Claremont, and Anna Leonowens of The King and I fame) as well as more typical examples of genteel women who fell on hard times and had to support themselves.

Governesses generally came from respectable families who had fallen on hard times; they were the women who had failed to find a husband. Entering a well-to-do family to teach and look after the children was one of the few respectable options available to educated young women in desperate circumstances. Governesses were in an amiguous position in English society--they weren't members of the serving class, but they had to earn their living working for their social equals. Despite their education and respectable background, governesses were generally regarded as both pitiable and threatening.

"Pitiable" is self-explanatory; often poorly paid and socially isolated, governesses were the young ladies whose families had fallen from financial grace or who had failed in the marriage market. "Threatening" is a little more complicated, and yet Brandon makes a compelling case for how nineteenth-century English society's disdain for the governess concealed anxiety about the very existence of working single women. If, as Victorian values dictated, women were meant to complement men as their helpmates and mothers to their children, what about the surplus of middle- and upper-middle-class single women? (Apparently working-class single women worked and no one felt too threatened by that.) The educated single woman hired to educate one's daughters could be seen as a harbinger of their fate if one lost one's fortune or failed to find decent husbands for them. No wonder relations between the governess and her employers often were strained and chilly.

In describing the lives of famous and unknown governesses, Brandon creates a narrative arc that shows how the limited education for women perpetuated itself through the practice of hiring a live-in teacher for one's children, usually daughters. Most governesses were versed in English history and grammar, fashionable modern languages, some math, geography, and especially music and needlework. This was the education of a "young lady" meant to snare a husband and adorn his household, not to compete with men in the professional marketplace. Brandon sees the effort of feminist reformers like Emily Davies to establish a college for women that was equal to that of men as the beginning of the end for the governess.

What struck me most as I read Governess was how much women's work was devalued, even as many women supported parents and siblings through governessing. Because the governess often lived with her employers, room and board was not an issue, so many sent their wages back to support widowed mothers, younger siblings, or even put brothers through school and establish them in a profession. Many governesses retired with almost nothing, and some of them had to deal with ungrateful male relatives who did not return the favor done for them. It's depressing to see how families assumed the governess was working for their benefit and not for her own; of course Nelly's wages should go to Tom's education instead of her own pleasure or future. For all the cultural revulsion over women working, many genteel families on hard times had no qualms about living off the earnings of their unmarried sisters and daughters.

Governess reveals the drab underbelly of the wish-fulfillment scenario of Jane Eyre and shows what could have been the possible fate of some of Jane Austen's heroines if they had not made happy marriages. I know that when I start getting down about my job, I'll remind myself it could be worse: I could be teaching French to the youngest Kardashian sisters.

Mad Men on NPR's Fresh Air!

I love Terry Gross and her interviews on NPR's Fresh Air! And it's especially sweet when she interviews Matthew Wiener, Jon Hamm (Don Draper) and John Slattery (Roger Sterling) about Mad Men. Enjoy this interview.

Yay for Mad Men

Mad Men, my favorite scripted show, won the Emmy for best drama and Matthew Wiener won for best screenwriting! Yay! Last night's episode was a rerun of "Three Sundays," an excellent episode from this season. Check out Basket of Kisses for more details. Also, enjoy this pretty photo of the cast and crew of Mad Men at last night's Emmy awards, courtesy of the New York Times.

Fiction: The Painter from Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein

The Painter from Shanghai (Historical Fiction) is an atmospheric and enthralling debut novel by Jennifer Cody Epstein. If you have never thought about twentieth-century Chinese art,or the effect of politics on artistic expression, this book will have you pondering these and wanting to learn more. Based on the life of Pan Yuliang, a woman painter who overcame prostitution and sexism to become one of the most respected artists of pre-Communist China, The Painter from Shanghai depicts Madame Pan as a woman who struggles with her shameful past and culture's sexism. In one pivotal scene, Yuliang makes a breakthrough about her adolescence in a brothel and her current difficulty with painting nudes:

And yet studying her model again now, Yulian suddenly realizes that her
troubles, then and now, arise from her own failure to see skin as either more or
less than itself; to see it outside of a spectrum of pain. In her old life
it was a liability, a soft surface waiting for wounds. As such at the
academy it inspires not creative passion but a wave of remembered
revulsion. And in both places she's been unable--hard as she might try--to
see it as beautiful. . . She thinks of Jinling, not in death, as she was the
last time Yuliang saw her, but in those impossibly early days when Yuliang first
began to attend to her. Before she fully understood a body's worth in
monetary terms, and could value it only in the currency of beauty. She
thinks of the way Jinling's skin had looked early in the morning. Sheened
in perspiration, stretched out in sheer joy. Limned in the early light of
a sunrise.

When Pan Yuliang recovers this sense of the body's beauty, she is able to
improve the quality of her nudes. You can see samples of Pan Yuliang's
paintings on Jennifer Cody Epstein's website. Madame Pan travels to France during the 1920s on a painting fellowship and returns to a China that has been wracked by revolution and Japanese imperialism. The last section of the novel takes place in 1936Nanjing, just before the horrible invasion. A new approach to the arts dictates that art must celebrate the common people and revolutionary ideals, and Pan Yuliang's last exhibit is a victim of this zeal. She flees to Paris, and never returns to China.

Anchoring the tale of Pan Yuliang's artistic growth is her marriage to Pan Zanhua, a custom's collector. Epstein sketches a sympathetic portrayal of a man who is caught between Western-style ideals and conservative Chinese values regarding marriage. Marriage to Pan Zanhua simultaneously frees Yuliang--from prostitution, illiteracy, and financial stress--but keeps her in the loving, possessive grip of a man faced with his own struggle to keep his wife close to his side while allowing her the freedom to travel for her art and safety.

I strongly recommend the Painter from Shanghai for its ability to capture the complexity of twentieth-century Chinese history, the artist's creative process, and last but not least, the character of a woman who faced so much adversity and overcame it to pursue her calling to paint.

Book Review: Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop

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Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China is so much more than a record of Fuchsia Dunlop's eating experience in China. It is a travel narrative, a coming-of-age story, a recipe collection, and a record of how China has changed within the past fifteen yearsDunlop, a British journalist who specializes in Chinese culture and food, first went to China in 1992 and returned on a research fellowship in 1994. It was at Sichuan University that she realized her true calling was cookery and food, not foreign policy, and she became the first Westerner to study at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine. She is the author of two well-received cookbooks, Land of Plenty (2002) and Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook , and she includes some of her favorite Chinese recipes in chapters of Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper.

The theme of Dunlop's book seems to be the omnivourous approach of the Chinese to eating. As she points out, Westerners are fascinated and repulsed by stories of Chinese recipes for dogs, animal penises, lizards and insects. Early in her travels, Dunlop vowed to herself that she would broaden her culinary horizons and try anything that her eager Chinese hosts would offer her, no matter how surprising or potentially disgusting it would seem to her upper-middle class British sensibilities. By the time, she has returned to England at her memoir's end, she can view a caterpillar in the same way as a native Chinese: not as a contaminant on her salad, but as a possibly tasty addition.

I can see where the "gross out" factor might turn prospective readers off to the book, or to the Chinese as a people, but Dunlop sees this as a trait of curiousity and resourcefulness, a willingness to take pleasure in certain aspects of food (its mouth feel, its preparation) that Western cuisines limit to the safe and obvious. Along the way, not only does Dunlop's palate change, but also China. The pet food scare of 2007 that had many Americans wondering about the safety of Chinese-made products is just the tip of the iceberg for "a professional omnivore" like Dunlop:

In the old days, in Sichuan, my hunger was a free and joyful thing.
The food before me was fresh, free-range, and wholesome, and I wanted to
devour it all. But in the last ten or fifteen years China has changed beyond all
recognition. I've seen the sewer-like rivers,the suppurating sores oflakes. I've read the newspaper reports;breathedthe toxic air and drunk the dirty water. And I've eaten far too much meat from endangered species. In China I have to throw all my principles to the wind if I am to continue in my vow of eating everything.

Fortunately, a trip to Hangzhou Province in eastern China revives Dunlop's love affair with China, as it points to a hopeful future of a more thoughtful approach to food production and consumption. Dunlop shows that China is far from monolithic; different provinces have different climates and histories that shape their cuisines. Sichuan cuisine is a playful, flirtatious "spice girl" who uses its famous pepper to charm, while Hunan is a fire-breathing peasant who piles on the chiles in its cooking. Coincidentally, Hunan Province is the birthplace of Mao Zedong.

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper piqued my own latent interest in Chinese food and culture. While I only have access to Chinese-American buffets in my own neck of the woods, Dunlop's book has inspired me to check out her earlier cookbooks as well as some other favorites.



and:

Mad Men: A Night to Remember

As I mentioned last week, AMC's Mad Men is appointment TV for me. This week's theme seemed to be: "Mad Men's Female Leads and the Men Who Cluelessly Take Advantage of Them." Let's review, shall we?

Peggy:
This week, Father John Gill (played by Colin Hanks) reappears and tries to coax Peggy back into the life of the parish by asking her to do some pro bono work for the Catholic Youth Organization dance. Peggy designs a flyer and then Father Gill asks her to meet with the dance chairs, who come up with some clueless criticisms, which means that Peggy must alter the flyer.

Moment of high comedy: Peggy asks if she may speak with Father Gill in private after the meeting, and one of the church ladies suddenly remembers she would like to speak to Father Gill, too. He politely puts her off. This is funny to me, because it doesn't matter what denomination you're in, the priest/minister/rabbi/ etc, is always the center of attention and competition among some female church members.

Peggy tells Father Gill that she expected him to back her up in this meeting because she knows more than the church ladies about how to advertise the dance. As the priest, if he had asserted that Peggy knew what she was doing, the church ladies would have acquiesced to Peggy's original design. I liked how firm she was about this. After all, she is doing the work for free, and as she tells him, she has been busy at work and is very tired.

Finally, when Father Gill comes to pick up the new copies, he tries to get her to talk about what is keeping her from taking the Holy Eucharist and participating more in the parish community. Peggy politely parries his attempts to get her to talk about her pregnancy, but he strikes a nerve when he asks if she thinks if she is unworthy of God's forgiveness and love. She seems genuinely rattled before she recovers. Our final shot of her is alone in her bathtub, looking shocked and devastated.

I didn't like Gill's attempt to turn Peggy's office into a confessional, but I could see him trying to reach her in the one place he can find her. After all, Peggy is not going to wander into the confessional any time soon. I think Gill also realized that he had fumbled in his attempt at pastoral counseling. To me, that's why the shot of him taking out his guitar and singing "Early in the Morning" was poignant. He's trying to do the right thing, he sees that he's not doing well at it, and he wants God to show him how to best reach Peggy.

Joan: When Harry Crane needs some help reading scripts to avoid troublesome placement of commercials, Joan is sent to find him a "girl" to help out. She actually ends up reading the scripts and is pleased to see that something novel and exciting will happen in As The World Turns--a patient will wake up out of a coma!! Her fiance the doctor is amused by this, but tells her that she shouldn't be reading these scripts; she should be watching her stories with a box of bon bons in her lap. This is only Clueless Male #1 in Joan's story. Later, she makes a brilliant pitch to Harry's clients that makes them think about buying air time in a different way. But does that get her the job as Harry's assistant? No, of course not. Instead he hires a new guy, whom he expects Joan to train. Harry becomes Clueless Male #2, and then Joan has to teach Clueless Male #3. Christina Hendricks does a brilliant job showing Joan's gradual awareness that she has found a "man's job" she enjoys and excels at, as well as her disappointment under her facade of agreeability.

Joan seems to have hoisted herself on her own petard in this situation. She has made it clear to Peggy that she has never wanted to be a copywriter or take on a man's job, and she has made a big deal out of her engagement ring. Yet, just when she has done excellent work that may have gained her a new position, no one considers her for it, because a) she's a woman and a secretary, and b) she has seemed content with her role as office manager. I loved the last shot of her, massaging her shoulder where her bra strap has dug into her shoulder. It captures a sense of how she has willingly constrained herself into a limited role that she is only beginning to find a burden.

Finally,
Betty: Oh, Betty, what a crappy few weeks this has been for you. First, Jimmy Barrett making you see the light about Don and his philandering ways. Then, being used as an experiment in marketing by your husband with your dinner party and choice of Heineken beer. Finally, Don's insistence that he hasn't had an affair with Bobbie Barrett, that he loves you, that he says he loves you all the time (which he doesn't) and that he doesn't want to lose all this (the house, the kids, the trophy wife for public functions). Don thinks he knows you because he can predict that you would be an ideal customer for a foreign beer, but he doesn't know what you really want--to be loved for yourself and respected in your marriage and home. No wonder you've taken to drinking in the late morning and sending the kids to bed at ridiculously early times.

Moment of high comedy #1: Roger Sterling's introduction of Duck Phillips to Crab Colson: "Crab, Duck. Duck, Crab."

Moment of high comedy #2: Don's grimace as he sits down at the dinner party. Earlier, Betty had destroyed a wobbly chair, possibly out of frustration at Don's slackening off on preparing for the party. Was he given the less comfortable replacement out of spite?

Moment of awesome thematic coherence:
Betty's big epiphany in this episode comes at the end, when she sits down to read a magazine while the children watch Father Knows Best. The camera cuts to the TV screen where we see the youngest son pout about how his "girlfriend" has betrayed him. How does he know this? Because he saw her in the soda shop, with "another boy at the end of MY straw." Then a cut to the Utz potato chip commercial with Jimmy Barrett insisting he isn't nuts, and would he lie to you about the goodness of Utz? That does it for Betty and she calls Don and tells him NOT to come home, she does NOT want to see him.

Why is this so awesome? Because earlier in the episode, Harry, the head of broadcasting operations, had been reamed by Duck because of a poorly placed ad. That is why Harry needed someone (Joan) to read scripts to identify potential placement issues. As he told Joan, "if there's a kid pushing his dinner away in disgust, we can't have Gorton's Fish Sticks." To anyone else watching TV that day, there would have been no connection between infidelity and Utz potato chips. But to Betty, even only half-engaged with the show, the ad brought back everything about Don's infidelity and dishonesty. Thus the decision.

Wondering who the heck I'm talking about? Catch up on last season:


Let me know what you think of last night's episode! Please!!!!

John Irving and the Nashville Public Library

Here's some book-related news for today:



John Irving to receive Nashville Public Library Literary Award



Now off to prepare excerpts of The Ramayana of Valmiki for my World Literature class.
Below are some of my favorite Irving novels. I especially loved The Cider House Rules.