Servants : a downstairs history of Britain from the nineteenth century to modern times

9780393241099
0393241092

First American Edition

xi, 385 pages, 8 pages of unnumbered plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Originally published under the title: Servants: a downstairs view of twentieth-century Britain
Includes bibliographical references (pages 353-368) and index

pt. I. The symbolic pantomime : 'A sort of silence and embarrassment' ; The dainty life ; 'A seat in the hall' ; Centralising the egg yolks ; Popinjays and mob caps ; The desire for perfection ; 'Some poor girl's got to go up and down, up and down'
pt. II. The sacred trust : The ideal village ; 'Silent, obsequious and omnipresent' ; 'Bowing and scraping'
pt. III. The age of ambivalence : 'Out of a cage' ; 'Don't think your life will be any different to mine' ; 'It was exploitation but it worked' ; 'Tall, strong, healthy and keen to work' ; The mechanical maid
pt. IV. Outer show and inner life : 'A vast machine that has forgotten how to stop working' ; 'Bachelor establishments are notoriously comfortable' ; The question of the inner life ; 'Do they really drink out of their saucers?' ; 'Of alien origin'
pt. V. A new Jerusalem : 'A new and useful life' ; The housewife militant ; 'The change: it must have been terrible for them' ; The shape of things to come
pt. VI. 'We don't want them days again' : 'We've moved to the front' ; 'I'd never done what I liked, never in all my life' ; 'We like it because the past is not so worrying as the news'

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