A governess is a women employed in a private household to educate pupils (usually girls) in a range of “accomplishments” ranging from reading to drawing. Governesses became increasing popular through the Victorian era for both the Upper and Middle-classes. Women who became governesses were generally “ladies” of an upper or middle-class upbringing themselves that had fallen on hard times and required to work for their living. Generally, governesses would live in the household and receive a salary along with their room and board.

The Awakening Conscience was painted by William Holman Hunt in 1853 and depicts a man and his mistress with the mistress in the middle of a revelation and rising toward redemption. The painting is also full of symbolism and includes such things as a man's glove on the floor which symbolizes the fate of a cast-off mistress was likely to be prostitution, and a tangled mess of yarn on the floor that symbolizes the tangled life and situation the girl has gotten herself into.