The governess

The governess in the nineteenth century personified a life of intense misery. She was also that most unfortunate individual; the single, middle-class woman who had to earn her own living. Although being a governess might be a degradation, employing one was a sign of culture and means. . . . The psychological situation of the governess made her position unenviable. Her presence created practical difficulties within the Victorian home because she was neither a servant nor a member of the family. She was from the social level of the family, but the fact that she was paid a salary put her at the economic level of the servants.

Beth Newman suggests the emergence of two "'separate spheres' of domesticity and paid labor" attendant upon the industrialization of labors formerly allotted to women such as 'spinning, weaving, dairy work" ("Introduction" to Jane Eyre, Bedford Edition, 8). Notice how Newman's gendering of these spheres corresponds to the passages above. Consider how Rochester's employment of Jane colors their relationship. As Armstrong argues, "only when she no longer needs his money can she become the mistress of his heart, and it is in this role, not as a governess, that she takes her rightful place of dominion over his home."
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