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Akiko Takei, Chukyo University, JapanAbstract
This study analyses the social, cultural, and educational factors that affected female teachers during Charles Dickens’s lifetime (1812–70) by examining the prevalence of jobs for women in Dickens’s novels through Biddy’s teaching career in Great Expectations (1860–61). In Dickens’s studies, critics have not paid much attention to Biddy’s character and history. However, analyses of Biddy’s becoming a schoolteacher are significant because this job was a new profession that began to gradually emerge during Dickens’s time. For Victorian middle-class women, teaching was the only means to earn a living without losing their social standing. This livelihood was also gradually adopted by their lower-middle-class and upper-working-class counterparts thanks to the pupil-teacher system. This system was formally introduced in Britain in 1846 by James Kay-Shuttleworth (1804–77) to improve teaching quality and secure highly skilled teachers. Shuttleworth’s reforms had a significant impact on Dickens’s fictional schools and teachers. Although most of these descriptions were negative, one exception was Biddy’s work as a schoolteacher, which Dickens described favourably. By focusing on Biddy’s qualifications as a teacher, the current study illustrates her development as well as the opportunities for income and independence that were available to ordinary lower-middle-class women.
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Conference: ECAH2025Stream: Literature/Literary Studies
This paper is part of the ECAH2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Takei A. (2025) Biddy as a Schoolteacher: The Prevalence of Teaching Jobs for Women in Charles Dickens’s Novels ISSN: 2188-1111 – The European Conference on Arts & Humanities 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 369-380) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1111.2025.31
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1111.2025.31
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