Welcome to my academic blog, a curated space where literature, theory, and critical thinking meet. As a postgraduate student of English at Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, I share detailed notes, assignments, presentations, and reflections on topics ranging from war poetry and modern drama to deconstruction and postmodernism. This platform serves as both a personal archive and a resource for fellow literature enthusiasts.
This blog is a reflection on my learning journey through activities assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad as part of our digital humanities study. The main focus of the task was to explore the question, “Can a computer write poetry?” through Oscar Schwartz’s perspective and to engage with different digital tools that connect literature and technology.
In this blog, I share my experience of taking a test to identify whether a poem was written by a human or a computer, exploring the CLiC Dickens Project and Activity Book, and experimenting with Voyant tools such as Cirrus, Links, Dreamspace, and Phrases. By writing about these activities, I aim to document not only what I learned but also how these tools changed the way I look at literature and creativity.The purpose of this blog is to record my personal and academic growth, and to show how digital approaches can enrich traditional literary studies.
2. Summarise how the video describes the life of a governess in 19th century British society and literature. Can you think of any novels with a governess among the characters?
The life of a governess in 19th-century British society was both demanding and lonely. A governess, often from a middle-class but financially troubled family, lived with an employer’s household to educate children—teaching anything from basic reading, writing, and arithmetic to French, Italian, piano, geography, and algebra. Beyond academics, she was expected to instill moral values, oversee prayers, and prepare young girls with “accomplishments” such as music, dance, and refined manners, making them ready for the marriage market.
However, her social position was deeply awkward. She was neither family nor servant, which left her isolated: families regarded her as an employee and avoided intimacy, while servants resented her presence and extra demands. Financially, she was expected to dress respectably but rarely earned enough to maintain appearances comfortably. Her role was marked by tension, loneliness, and the strain of embodying both refinement and moral guidance without belonging fully to either social world.
In literature, the governess became a useful figure for novelists after the 1840s. She represented a young, respectable, but friendless woman navigating the world alone—ideal for a narrative of trials, independence, and self-discovery. Unlike shopgirls or prostitutes, a governess was socially acceptable for middle-class readers while still vulnerable and open to adventure.
Examples of novels with governesses
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë – Jane works as a governess at Thornfield Hall.
Vanity Fair (1848) by William Makepeace Thackeray – Becky Sharp begins her career as a governess.
Agnes Grey (1847) by Anne Brontë – A semi-autobiographical tale of a governess’s hardships.
Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) – A gothic story told by an unnamed governess.
Activity 15.2 Austen’s governesses
3. Go to the CLiC Concordance tab (http://clic.bham.ac.uk/concordance).
4. Select novels by Jane Austen in the “Search the Corpora” box. You can start typing “Austen” and CLiC will show all of Austen’s novels which you then need to select one by one.
5. Select the subset “All text”.
6. Under “Search for terms”, type the word governess.
Activity 15.3 The social status of governesses in Pride and Prejudice
7. Following on from step 6 above, find the line that includes the sentence “Has your governess left you?” You will see to the right of the concordance line that this is from “pride” (Pride and Prejudice), chapter 29, paragraph 26, and it is sentence 71. Click on the “in bk.” graphic to the right, and CLiC will open the passage concerned from the novel.
8. The short passage contains a wealth of evidence for the status of governesses and the attitudes of families towards them. What does it telll you about families who employed a governess and those that didn’t?
Activity 15.4 Children’s feelings about governesses
9. Start again by going to the CLiC Concordance tab
(http://clic.bham.ac.uk/concordance).
10. Find “The Secret Garden” in the “Search the corpora” box, and select it.
11. Search in “All text” for the term governess.
12. You should find 8 examples.
13. Explore their contexts by clicking on the graphic “In bk.” for each line.
Activity 15.5 Broadening the exploration
14. Choose one of the following corpora in CLiC from the Concordance tab (http://clic.bham.ac.uk/concordance):
a. Dickens’s Novels (DNov)
b. The 19th Century Reference Corpus (19C)
c. The 19th Century Children’s Literature Corpus (ChiLit)
Figure 33: Choosing corpora
15. Run a concordance for governess in the chosen corpus.
16. Go through the concordance and try to find examples for at least one of thefollowing questions:
a. What examples can you find for the points mentioned in the British Library video, in Activity 15.1 above, about the tension that a governess would have felt in the 19th century, being neither part of the family nor of the servants?
“so, that he should speak so uncivilly to me, their governess, and a perfect stranger to himself” (AgnesG 6) → Shows her outsider status; even children treat her rudely as she is neither kin nor servant but “a stranger.”
“The servants, seeing in what little estimation the governess was held by both parents and children, regulated their behaviour” (AgnesG 20) → She is caught between family and servants, respected by neither.
“Her reference has answered all the questions, and she's ready” (arma 47) → Suggests how employers scrutinized governesses formally, treating them more like hired staff than family.
This confirms the British Library video’s point about governesses being “betwixt and between”—lonely, mistrusted, and judged.
b. Which children do the governesses look after? What does this tell you about childhood in the 19th century?
“a determination to keep, not only his sisters, but his governess in order, by violent manual and pedal applications” (AgnesG 8) → Boys younger than school age could be under a governess’s care. Their unruliness reflects the difficulty of disciplining privileged children.
“lessons and practised her music was calculated to drive any governess to despair” (AgnesG 17) → Governesses were expected to oversee girls’ accomplishments (music, etc.), showing that childhood was a stage of preparation for adult social roles, especially marriage.
“January I was to enter upon my new office as governess in the family of Mr. Murray, of Horton Lodge” (AgnesG 13) → Highlights the practice of placing governesses in affluent households; children of such families were the ones who benefited.
This tells us that 19th-century childhood, particularly in middle-class and gentry families, was shaped by education for social polish and discipline, not only by affection or play.
c. What is the social background of the governesses? Why do they choose the job?
“though I was a poor clergyman's daughter, a governess, and a schoolmistress” (AgnesG 31) → Many governesses were daughters of clergymen or middle-class families who had fallen on hard times.
“The modest ambition of my life to become Miss Milroy's governess” (arma 35) → Shows that some saw the position as a respectable form of employment for educated but financially insecure women.
“The advertisement may go to London now; and, if a governess does come of it...” (arma 43) → Indicates how the profession was organized through advertisements, reflecting its formal, transactional nature.
This matches the video’s point: women became governesses to support themselves respectably when their family circumstances left them without income.
In Dickens’s novels, governesses are typically depicted as educated women from respectable backgrounds who have taken up teaching out of financial necessity. They look after the children of the upper or aspirational middle classes, reinforcing the class-based nature of education. Many examples illustrate the governess’s ambiguous social role: they are neither fully integrated into the family nor accepted by the servants, reflecting the tensions described in the British Library video.
5. Voyant - the activity will be explained in the lab
1. Cirrus
2.Links
3. Dreamspace
4. Phrases
Learning Outcome
This task helped me grow in several ways:
Working on this assignment has been a very personal journey of growth. When I first took the poetry test, I was surprised at how difficult it was to separate human writing from computer-generated lines. It made me realize that creativity is not a fixed quality, and that what we often take as “uniquely human” can now be imitated, even challenged, by technology. That moment pushed me to think more deeply about what imagination really means to me.
Exploring the CLiC Dickens Project and Activity Book gave me a sense of discovery—like I was learning to look at literature through a new pair of glasses. I could see hidden patterns, overlooked details, and social realities, such as the complex life of a governess, that I might not have noticed in traditional reading. It made me feel more confident about using digital tools to enrich my literary studies.
Experimenting with Voyant tools was both fun and eye-opening. The visualizations helped me interact with texts in a more dynamic way. Instead of just reading, I was playing with words, connections, and themes, which made me feel more engaged and curious.
Overall, this lab was more than an academic exercise. It changed the way I look at literature, showing me that technology can be a companion in creativity rather than a threat. On a personal level, it has made me more open-minded, curious, and excited about exploring the intersection of literature and digital innovation.
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