My Particular Friend footnotes: The Poison Pen Affair 4

Beginning with I Seek a Position:

Being a governess or a lady’s companion might be the only hope for a genteel woman with few marital prospects. Unfortunately a governess existed neither above or below stairs, hated by the servants but not part of the family, either. In Emma, Jane Austen perhaps gives her view of the role of governess. Here Jane Fairfax is talking to Mrs. Elton.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but this is by no means my intention; I make no inquiry myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends. When I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being long unemployed. There are places in town, offices, where inquiry would soon produce something—Offices for the sale—not quite of human flesh—but of human intellect.”

“Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to the abolition.”

“I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade,” replied Jane; “governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different certainly as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies. But I only mean to say that there are advertising offices, and that by applying to them I should have no doubt of very soon meeting with something that would do.”