ABSTRACT

The social status of early modern women was enhanced by their emerging role as educators in the domestic and wider economy. The Wit of A Woman play has two features of the educative functions: one formal, a conventional gentlewoman's governess; one informal an unconventional, that of self-appointed female tutor to the patriarchs. However, Balia in The Wit of A Woman is a single woman who has become a governess from economic necessity. She exemplifies a growing, real occupational trend for unmarried, never-married, and widowed gentlewomen. Balia, a poor, aged gentlewoman is governess to four young gentlewomen boarders in her rented home. The four girls are daughters of four widowers, each of whose four sons is in love with one of the girls and wishes to marry her. Balia's "maiden school" represents a prototype of the girls' private boarding schools of the later seventeenth century. Balia's pedagogical relationship with her pupils appears to conform to contemporary theory and practice.