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| Document Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Bridget Hill |
| ISBN: | 0198206216 9780198206217 |
| OCLC Number: | 33862090 |
| Description: | 278 p. ; 23 cm. |
| Contents: | Introduction -- Male and female servants -- The sexual vulnerability and sexuality of female domestic servants -- Vails, perquisites, and allowances: the moral economy of servants -- Opportunity, identity, and servility -- Kin as servants -- Pauper servants -- Nicholas Blundell's servants -- Serving the clergy -- A London domestic servant: Mary Ashford -- Richardson's Pamela and domestic service -- Literate and literary servants in eighteenth-century fact and fiction -- Conclusion. |
| Responsibility: | Bridget Hill. |
| More information: |
Abstract:
The importance of domestic service in the eighteenth century has long been recognised by historians but apart from a number of recent controversial articles, this is the first detailed study of the subject since J. Jean Hecht's book of 1956. Bridget Hill's essays question the stereotype of the domestic servant - usually male and most often in large households employing many servants where a strict hierarchy prevailed - that has dominated all discussion hitherto. Using eighteenth-century diaries, journals and memoirs as well as the press and literature of the period, she examines the lives of the majority of domestic servants, who were employed in more modest establishments, or in single or two-servant households. The book looks at the life of pauper apprentices to service, paid little or nothing for their efforts, and at the frequency with which both near and distant kin were employed as unpaid, or badly-paid, domestic servants.
It also examines the vulnerability of female domestic servants to sexual harassment and discusses the sexuality of servants. Bridget Hill's fascinating and detailed essays provide a new perspective on an important facet of English domestic life in the eighteenth century.
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Similar Items
Related Subjects:(6)
- Household employees -- England -- History -- 18th century.
- England -- Social life and customs -- 18th century.
- England -- Social conditions -- 18th century.
- Domestic service -- History
- England
- Huishoudelijk personeel.
User lists with this item (2)
- domestic studies(1 items)
by longhunter updated 2010-02-18
- historic social research(185 items)
by chucksmith updated 2009-05-30

