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A courtesan is a prostitute with a courtly, wealthy, or upper-class clientele. Historically, the term referred to a courtier, a person who attended the court of a monarch or other powerful person.
Jane Eyre is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman that follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.
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Margaret King (1773–1835), also known as Margaret King Moore, Lady Mount Cashell and Mrs Mason, was an Anglo-Irish hostess, and a writer of female-emancipatory fiction and health advice. Despite her wealthy aristocratic background, she had republican sympathies and advanced views on education and women's rights, shaped in part by having been a favoured pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft. Settling in Italy in later life, she reciprocated her governess's care by offering maternal aid and advice to Wollstonecraft's daughter Mary Shelley and her travelling companions, husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and stepsister Claire Clairmont. In Pisa, she continued the study of medicine which she had begun in Germany and published her widely read Advice to Young Mothers, as well as a novel, The Sisters of Nansfield: A Tale for Young Women.
Mary Ann Radcliffe was an important British figure in the early feminist movement.
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The Grand Tour of Europe became increasingly popular among women in the late 18th century and early 19th century. For British upper-class young women travelling Europe was part of formal education as well as a form of entrance into elite society. When published, women’s letters and travel diaries about their experiences provided entertainment and vicarious travel for a less elite audience.
References
- 1 2 Gissing, George (1998). The Odd Women. Broadview Press. p. 9. ISBN 9781551111117.
For the unfortunate minority who did not marry and who had no male relative to support them, there was always recourse to the acceptably genteel and domestic positions of governess or lady's companion.
- ↑ Gifford, Don (1981). Joyce Annotated: Notes for Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. University of California Press. p. 12. ISBN 9780520906952.
Apart from marriage or a convent, there were precious few careers open to her, and some of those such as clerking in a shop or going into service implied a loss of social status. ... If educated, she could seek employment as a governess or companion or teacher.
- ↑ cliffsnotes.com Critical Essays Women's Roles in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
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