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victorian221bA while ago I watched Servants: A Life Below Stairs, a documentary series about domestic service in the 19th century Britain. There they referenced this book, a memoir written by a woman who used to be a cook in the 1920s, when domestic service was gradually giving up ground to employment in shops and factories. Nevertheless, it’s a vivid insight into a life of a servant. This book was a bestseller back in 1968 when it was first published, having created quite an uproar and made its author a celebrity. It is listed as a source of inspiration for Downton Abbey.
Margaret Powell (nee Langley) was born in 1907 to working-class parents, and in spite of her success at school—she won a scholarship—she had to go into domestic service to provide for herself and her family. She hated being a servant, but she had no other option.
It is a witty, snarky narrative about everyday challenges servants had to face: a back-breaking amount of work, poor living conditions, and often contemptuous treatment from the masters.
We always called them ‘Them’. ‘Them’ was the enemy, ‘Them’ overworked us, and ‘Them’ underpaid us, and to ‘Them’ servants were a race apart, a necessary evil.
It was a discovery to find out that many in domestic service remained unmarried because they simply didn’t have a chance to meet the opposite sex while off duty: servants had almost no free hours to themselves except half a day every other Sunday, the male and female living quarters were strictly segregated, and any kind of courtship was frowned upon. Very often servants weren’t allowed to have good food or fashionable clothes for fear that it would give them “wrong ideas”. People in service were considered to be a commodity, like furniture.
Their own lives were so devoid of excitement that they had to find all their life vicariously. Sexual life, social life, every sort of life.
The only legitimate way for Margaret to escape the hated domestic service was to get married. Bearing in mind an unfortunate example of a maid who was seduced by the nephew of the household mistress, Margaret didn’t get involved with “them”. She kept looking for a match within her own circle and went to great lengths to choose the right man among the prospective candidates while staying virtuous and avoiding judgment from her employees.
After all’s said and done, you’ve only got one lot of goods and if you’re going to distribute them to all and sundry you haven’t got anything worth keeping when the real one comes along!
Some reviews on goodreads accused Margaret of being too bitter describing how appalling her work was. I can say that I also have an experience of working in bad conditions, and if I were to write a book about it, I’m not sure I’d be able to be as humorous as Margaret is. Eventually Margaret achieved her goal: she married a good man who supported her in everything. Their sons got university education. What I found especially empowering about the book is that Margaret didn’t give up on her dream of learning. She resumed her studies in her late fifties, even though a lot of people surrounding her didn’t understand her aspiration and disapproved of it. Her husband wasn’t one of them, though.
The seeds are in you and although it may take ten, twenty, or forty years, eventually you can do what you wanted to do at the beginning.
Margaret Powell (nee Langley) was born in 1907 to working-class parents, and in spite of her success at school—she won a scholarship—she had to go into domestic service to provide for herself and her family. She hated being a servant, but she had no other option.
It is a witty, snarky narrative about everyday challenges servants had to face: a back-breaking amount of work, poor living conditions, and often contemptuous treatment from the masters.
We always called them ‘Them’. ‘Them’ was the enemy, ‘Them’ overworked us, and ‘Them’ underpaid us, and to ‘Them’ servants were a race apart, a necessary evil.
It was a discovery to find out that many in domestic service remained unmarried because they simply didn’t have a chance to meet the opposite sex while off duty: servants had almost no free hours to themselves except half a day every other Sunday, the male and female living quarters were strictly segregated, and any kind of courtship was frowned upon. Very often servants weren’t allowed to have good food or fashionable clothes for fear that it would give them “wrong ideas”. People in service were considered to be a commodity, like furniture.
Their own lives were so devoid of excitement that they had to find all their life vicariously. Sexual life, social life, every sort of life.
The only legitimate way for Margaret to escape the hated domestic service was to get married. Bearing in mind an unfortunate example of a maid who was seduced by the nephew of the household mistress, Margaret didn’t get involved with “them”. She kept looking for a match within her own circle and went to great lengths to choose the right man among the prospective candidates while staying virtuous and avoiding judgment from her employees.
After all’s said and done, you’ve only got one lot of goods and if you’re going to distribute them to all and sundry you haven’t got anything worth keeping when the real one comes along!
Some reviews on goodreads accused Margaret of being too bitter describing how appalling her work was. I can say that I also have an experience of working in bad conditions, and if I were to write a book about it, I’m not sure I’d be able to be as humorous as Margaret is. Eventually Margaret achieved her goal: she married a good man who supported her in everything. Their sons got university education. What I found especially empowering about the book is that Margaret didn’t give up on her dream of learning. She resumed her studies in her late fifties, even though a lot of people surrounding her didn’t understand her aspiration and disapproved of it. Her husband wasn’t one of them, though.
The seeds are in you and although it may take ten, twenty, or forty years, eventually you can do what you wanted to do at the beginning.
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Date: 2019-06-18 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-18 05:46 pm (UTC)