"There Was Nothing She Could Teach"

Miss Margland, a minor governess character in Frances Burney’s 1796 novel Camilla, is rarely discussed by literary critics. This article, which engages with recent critical examinations of Burney’s work in relation to Bildung and the marriage plot, argues that Miss Margland’s peripherality, insignificance and incompetence enable her to draw attention to the inhibitions that social and narrative conventions place upon the complex and meaningful development of women. The theories of Pierre Bourdieu are used both to highlight the governess’s particular investment in misrecognizing the economic foundations of cultural dominance, and to show how her wielding of unofficial power allows her to reveal the rules and paradoxes governing courtship and marriage. Sustained comparisons between Miss Margland and Camilla demonstrate how the governess acts as a catalyst for the heroine’s Bildung, and exposes the injustice of being compelled to submit to social codes and behaviors that limit women’s education and development.