Servants in Victorian England Servants were imperative to the functioning of middle and upper class homes in Victorian England. Without the veritable army of servants for the upper and upper-middle classes, women would not be able to live the leisured lives they had grown accustomed, and would certainly not have the time to flaunt their status with neighbor-calling and the numerous balls and social activities. Even most lower-middle and middle-middle classes employed at least one servant, as assistance was almost a necessity in maintaining the home (Roberts 205). For the most part, these servants had an appreciation for their work, with the opportunity to live in an upper class home and have job security, as the alternative was industrial work with unexplained lay-offs and less than desirable, and often unsanitary, living conditions (Margetson 155). The highest classes of families would employ this “army” of servants, each servant having a specific duty, and providing them all with matching uniforms. For the less wealthy families, a “maid of all works” was common, where the maid would assist with cleaning, cooking, and raising the children (Roberts 205). In families where many servants were employed, a sort of ranking system occurred, between all of the servants, and even within particular positions. Head butlers, or stewards, were considered higher in ranking than the rest of the servants. The head butler would have managerial responsibilities over the other servants of the home. In the middle, there were valet's, which were the personal assistants to the gentleman, who would clean his clothes, assist him in dressing and in shaving. The lady's maid had similar duties for the woman of the home, mostly assisting in dress... ... middle of paper ... ...g to read the quotes of people telling their experiences of living as a servant versus the people living as a master. Also, here is a link to a picture of the Servant's Hall of a judge's home in Victorian England, to give an idea of the living conditions of servants. Works Cited Kelley, Grace. “Nineteenth-Century Medicine in the Literal Sense”. 1999. . Margetson, Stella. Victorian High Society. New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, INC, 1980. Roberts, Adam C. Victorian Culture and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2003. “Servants' Hall.” The Judges Lodging Museum. . “The Victorians: The London Townhouse - The Servants.” Romance Ever After. 2001. .
This article talks about the growing movement of hiring maids for household work. This article starts off as being about gender inequality, but then turns into an issue of class and moral standards. The author explains her own experiences of house cleaning. She also describes how “wealthier class’s children are being raised with the attitude”. (Barbara Ehrenreich) That the people that clean up after them are “lower” than everyone else. Additionally she talks about how the hiring of house hold workers will increase and eventually move on to the middle class homes.
The introduction is followed by seven chapters that describe the manner in which women from Colonial to Antebellum lived and how their work in the home changed and was valued: "An Economical Society," "A New Source of Profit and Support," "How Strangely Metamorphosed," "All the In-Doors Work," "The True Economy of Housekeeping," "The Political Economy of Housework," and "The Pastoralization of Housework." The last chapter acts as the conclusion where she states how the Antebellum woman felt devalued in her role as housewife and that women today are still devalued in the home
Children usually enjoyed the benefit of their mothers’ presence on a daily basis. The mother’s place was considered to be in the home. Common thought dictated that a woman should be available at all times to care for her husband and children. She would supervise the staff, servants and/or nannies, if her family could afford them. The idea of a working mother was considered highly improper and thought to result in neglect of husband, children and home. Supposedly, illness or even death might arise in the children. An absent wife would also find an unhappy and strained relationship with her husband. Reporting on Birmingham, in Chadwick’s 1842 Report on Sanitary Conditions, The Committee of Physicians and Surgeons declares that:
Different documents in the Gilded Age prominently illustrated gender inequality in their portrayal of men and women within society. Many photographs in the time period by Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine did not shed light on a woman’s hardships, but rather undermined their domestic work. Society failed to give women credit for their work at home due to the common misconception that a woman’s work was easier than that of a man’s. Margaret Byington’s article Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town contrastingly gave an accurate portrayal of the distress women faced in their everyday life. The representation of women in the Gilded Age varies significantly between that in the photographs, and their domestic, weak personification, and in Byington’s article, which gives women a more accurate depiction through their domestic duties.
“The Pastoralization of Housework” by Jeanne Boydston is a publication that demonstrates women’s roles during the antebellum period. Women during this period began to embrace housework and believed their responsibilities were to maintain the home, and produce contented and healthy families. As things progressed, housework no longer held monetary value, and as a result, womanhood slowly shifted from worker to nurturer. The roles that women once held in the household were slowly diminishing as the economy became more industrialized. Despite the discomfort of men, when women realized they could find decent employment, still maintain their household and have extra income, women began exploring their option.
Two hundred years ago, during the reign of Queen Victoria in England, the social barriers of the Victorian class system firmly defined the roles of women. The families of Victorian England were divided into four distinct classes: the Nobility or Gentry Class, the Middle Class, the Upper Working Class, and lastly, the Lower Working class . The women of these classes each had their own traditional responsibilities. The specifics of each woman’s role were varied by the status of her family. Women were expected to adhere to the appropriate conventions according to their place in the social order . For women in Victorian England their lives were regulated by these rules and regulations, which stressed obedience, loyalty, and respect.
In the article, Cult of True Womanhood, the underlying theme is of what society thought was the ideal woman. Women of that time where thought of as homemakers “deeply shaped by the so called “cult of womanhood” a collection of attitudes that associated “true” womanhood with home and family.” Women were supposed to stay home and clean and take care of the children while men worked and provided for their families. The misconception that housework was not hard and that even these women didn’t work as hard as paid labors was a strong opinion of the time. “With economic value calculated more and more exclusively in terms of cash and men increasingly basing their claims to “manhood” on their role as “breadwinners,” women’s unpaid household labor went largely unacknowledged.” Many married women ran their households and took on extra work to support their families and many in underpaid positions. Many of these were even in the service of other’s houses working in “true womanhood”
Indentured servants. Becoming a servant was an easy way for people to get to the New
The role of an indentured servant in the 1700s was not a glamorous one. They came to the New World knowing that, for a time, they would be slaves for someone they did not know and the risk of disease and death was high, but the opportunity that laid ahead of them after their time of servitude was worth everything to these settlers of the New World. They came to America for the same reasons as all of the other settlers. Religious freedom, land, wealth, and a new start were motives for both settlers and indentured servants but the one thing separating most settlers from the indentured servants was that they could afford their voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Indentured servants couldn’t buy their ticket to the New World, but that didn’t stop
Firstly, an African American maid raised white children and had many chores while doing so. An experienced black maid quoted on “History Matters” refers to the amount of work she had to do by saying, “It’s “Mammy, do this, “or “Mammy, do that,” or “Mammy do the other,” from my mistress, all the time.” The maids were required to wash, dress, and feed the children more than three times a day. Somet...
of the structure itself. This class "took immense pride in their homes which they saw as a reflection of status" ("BBC Homes"). The styles were excessively ornamental and took their influence from Gothic styles, rococo, styles, the Orient, and developments from their own industrialization. With owning such ornately decorated residences they had to show them off; this was done so through dinner parties and balls. People of course could not be outmatched by the rich styles of their houses and therefore doled out large amounts of money for clothes and transportation.
Throughout the Victorian Era, the standard of occupations were distinctly divided based on class. These social classes that divided the caliber of work in occupations were: the upper class, middle or working class and the lower class. Occupations that required skilled labor and unskilled labor each employed people in separate classes. Men and women within each class had different jobs in accordance with the type of work in their social class. (Victorian Web.)
Many of people today feel trapped inside their homes, just how the women of Pre-Industrial Europe felt. Working day in and day out inside the homes, just to keep the family together, and make a little money on the side, these women were an integral part of Pre-Industrial families. Not only were the women important to Pre-Industrial European families, but so were the households. Much of the money was made in the households, and this is where families either succeeded or failed. The household and women of Pre-Industrial Europe played an integral role in the economy of the families, and more importantly, the women of these households kept them running smoothly. Without either of these important aspects of life in Pre-Industrial Europe, it is safe to say that the families would have collapsed, due to a lack of organization and structures. Pre-Industrial Europe, in which the women and the household were “the factories” per se, due to the income they generated, was much different from the Europe we know today. Leading into the Industrialization of Europe beginning in the late 1700's and lasting through the early 1800's, the household played an integral role in the family’s income. Without the household, the families would literally collapse, due to a lack of organization and stability. Within these important family sub-units, there was one married couple, their children, the family’s servants, and in some cases, depending upon the region of Europe, there were grandparents, aunts and uncles. Not only did the father and servants of the house work, but also the women and children. Also, in the case of there being more than one generation of family in a single household, depending upon the region of Europe, the grandparents, aunts, and uncles would also work within the house. Once the children of these households reached a certain age, usually the early teens, they were sent off to work in a house as a servant. These servants were different then the servants of today, as they worked for room, board, and food, not waiting on the family. Once they started to generate income, the teens would save up the money necessary to begin their own family. However, there were the few exceptions; teens that did not work as servants, and ended up marrying into an existing household. This however,...
There have always been class divisions in England’s social groups, but it was not until the nineteenth century that they were labeled. The lower class was often uneducated and overlooked and mostly servants and prostitutes, the middle class generally had steady jobs and members of the higher classes were born to old money and did not have to work. The French Lieutenant’s Woman written by John Fowles is a complex “Victorian novel filled with enchanting mysteries and magically erotic possibilities” (Canby) in which, Fowles describes a Victorian society in 1867 that is still largely separated by class, which creates strong restrictions with respect to sex and marriage. Notably, conflict in the novel involves scandals where these restrictions are disregarded. Fowles shows that sex and marriage were still largely dictated by whether a person belonged to the lower, middle or upper class in order to highlight that there were more restrictions for higher-class men and women.
In the Middle Ages houses of the poor and wealthy were often alike, except for the wealthy because they could occupy all their floors of the house. Their business would be on the first floor, living quarters on the second, and servant’s quarters on the third. If they family were poor they might have several families living under one roof, which makes the house very crowded (Gies, 243).