110 Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840–1920
Ellen Jordan writes that the two main careers open to middle-class women
in 1840s England were dressmaking and teaching.^25 Jane has lost her position as
a governess, and her very fi rst inquiry of the shopkeeper upon entering Morton
is whether there is work available for a dressmaker (there is not). Her time in the
countryside consistently demonstrates her particular economic vulnerability: as
a young, middle-class woman, she simply cannot fi nd work. Her conversation
with a shopkeeper indicates her basic ignorance about rural life and work:
‘What was the chief trade in this place? What did most of the people do?’
‘Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver’s needle-factory,
and at the foundry’.
‘Did Mr. Oliver employ women?’
‘Nay; it was men’s work’.
‘And what do the women do?’
‘I knawn’t’, was the answer. ‘Some does one thing, and some another. Poor folk
mun get on as they can’.^26Although this exchange begins by showing Jane’s ignorance of the local econ-
omy, it swift ly shows that she is not the only woman to struggle: ‘Some does
one thing , and some another. Poor folk mun get on as they can’. Jane encoun-
ters evidence of this struggle throughout her sojourn in this rural town, during
which she primarily interacts with women: the shopkeeper, the young woman
who tells her that they ‘do not keep a servant’, the housekeeper at the parsonage,
a girl throwing porridge to a pig (and, more distantly, the mother who grants her
permission to give it to Jane), Mary and Diana Rivers (seen through the window
of their parlour), and fi nally their servant Hannah.^27 With the exception of the
shopkeeper, all of these women are in positions of dependence, with their livings
dependent on their places in a household: they are servants, wives, daughters,
cousins. Jane’s inability to fi nd work is not due to a fault of her own, but because
there is simply no work available for her.
Just as this situation is not unique to Jane, the text also hints that this situa-
tion is not limited to any one small town. Morton is a small hamlet, but its diverse
economy includes several varieties of work: there is a rural economy of farming ; a
small industrial economy, with both a needle factory (small consumer goods) and
a foundry (presumably indicating production on a somewhat larger scale); and a
service economy of shopkeepers and servants. Later, there is some inconsistency
regarding Morton’s industrial and rural economies: St John describes Jane’s stu-
dents as ‘cottagers’ children – at the best, farmer’s daughters’.^28 What happened to
the ‘good deal’ of people who worked at the needle factory and the foundry? Th is
slippage between economies suggests that Morton can be read as an amalgamation
of diff erent types of small towns in 1840s England: some more industrialized, and
some less so. Morton might be any small town in England, or all of them. Tellingly,
Jane can fi nd no position in any of its trades or industries, suggesting that the entire