This chapter opens with a flashback to a time when the Governess was a young girl in the slums of London. The Governess's father was a traveling peddler, and she had to work very hard to earn her way into the upper echelons of society. The flashback reveals that she was raised in a very poor family, and that her father's main occupation was to peddle food to the poor. When she was a child, her father would take her to the market place at night, where she would have to wait in line for food to be delivered to her family. When the time came for her father to return home, she was too young and inexperienced to enter the upper ranks of society, so she was forced to work as a prostitute. She was also forced to learn to read and write, which she did very poorly.