In the troubling hierarchy of the servant class, the governess was a solitary and contradictory figure. 

Respectable, poised, and valued for her education, she was nevertheless unequal in social status to the rank of her employers (and likely ostracized by the servants below stairs for the same reason). 

Held to the highest of standards yet paid the lowest of wages, hers was a life of paradox, of social, emotional, and financial dissonance. Wrote one employer: she is in the family—but not of it.