Student and Teachers: Female Novelists

Teaching's a great subject for novelists.  Goodbye Mr. Chips by James Hilton.  The clueless Paul Pennyfeather in Evelyn Waugh's comedy, Decline and Fall (whose obscure school is itself modeled on the school in Charles Dicken's inventive Nickolas Nickleby.)  The Utopian classroom of Louisa May Alcott's Little Men.  But the novels-- by female authors-- below stick in my mind.

Villette by Charlotte Bronte.  Bronte hated being a governess, but both her novels involve teaching -- Jane Eyre and then this odd novel in which a woman becomes a teacher by default, as it were, in a small French village, and falls in love with a cantankerous, charismatic "professor."  The heroine's choice of career seems arbitrary -- and yet it later feels like destiny.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark.  Jean Brodie is that rare creature, a truly inspired teacher, who can mold her "girls" merely by force of intellect-- she knows if she can capture their minds at a young age, they are "hers" for life.  That turns out to be tragically true. 

The Story of My Life by Helen Keller.  Few novels evoke the joy of learning -- and the incredible power of teaching -- as this memoir by the blind and deaf Helen Keller, whose gifted teacher famously bestows upon young Helen the gift of language.  A well-known story, worth re-reading.

Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman.  Tell me: why has this wonderful novel disappeared?  An epistolary novel (told in letters and memos) with pointed details about social expectations regarding women.  A young, idealistic teacher in a large public school almost gives up, but sticks it out.  As an aside, Bel Kaufman was the grand-daughter of the Yiddish novelist, Sholom Aleichem.

In the House of Brede by Rumer Godden.  Like Villete, a novel in which a seemingly capricious choice (a professional woman decides to enter a cloistered Benedictine community) turns into a life. It's not an ordinary classroom-- there is no obligation to stay-- yet the heroine finds herself.