Abstract
Cultural reportage between 1920 and 1950 declared a transformation of social structures. The societal prevalence of the servant was diminishing; it was the era of the “servant question,” when the servant-keeping classes bemoaned the changes pressing upon them. A new historicist approach produces a counter-intuitive reading of servant representations in the literature of the time. Stories by Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Bowen and Mollie Panter-Downes span this era of domestic revolution. Lady’s maids, illustrative of the most intimate of servant pairings, demonstrate that rather than desiring change, to their situation, status and class, these individuals chose instead to reinforce and reiterate the terms of the servant’s social contract.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See Selina Todd, “Domestic Service and Class Relations in Britain 1900–1950,” Past and Present 203 (May, 2009): 181–204.
- 2.
See also, for example, T. K. Derry and T. L. Jarman’s Modern Britain: Life and Work through Two Centuries of Change (London: John Murray, 1979); Ross McKibbin mentions the decline of the domestic servant, although only in passing, in Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 109.
- 3.
See Pamela Horn, Knowing Their Place: Life Below Stairs in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 76.
- 4.
Typically the literary use of the phrase “lady’s maid” reduces it to its function, to operating as a verb.
- 5.
Isabella Beeton, The Book of the Household Management (London: S. O. Beeton, 1861), 983.
- 6.
Alison Light, Mrs Woolf and the Servants: The Hidden Heart of Domestic Service (London: Fig Tree, 2010), 7.
- 7.
Lucy Delap, Knowing their Place: Domestic Service in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
- 8.
Regarding interdependence and the maid/mistress, see Light, Mrs Woolf and Servants, 38 (see note 6).
- 9.
Mary Wilson, The Labors of Modernism: Domesticity, Servants and Authorship in Modernist Fiction (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 4.
- 10.
See Patrick D. Morrow, Katherine Mansfield’s Fiction (Madison, WI: Popular Press, 1993), 90, who compares the maidservant in “The Child Who Was Tired.”
- 11.
See Bruce Robbins, “[Review of] Mary Wilson’s The Labors of Modernism: Domesticity, Servants and Authorship in Modernist Fiction,” in Woolf Studies Annual 20 (2014): 127.
- 12.
Geri Kimber, Katherine Mansfield and the Art of the Short Story (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 28.
- 13.
Katherine Mansfield, “The Lady’s Maid,” Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield (London: Constable, 1966), 376.
- 14.
Ibid., 375.
- 15.
Ibid., 377.
- 16.
Diana Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender and Identity in Clothing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 62.
- 17.
Ibid., 62.
- 18.
Mansfield, “The Lady’s Maid,” 378.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
See Anne Summers, “Public Functions, Private Premises: Female Professional Identity and the Domestic-Service Paradigm in Britain, c. 1850–1930,” in Borderlines: Genders and Identities in War and Peace 1870–1930, ed. Billie Melman (London: Routledge, 1998), 371.
- 21.
Phyllis Lassner, Elizabeth Bowen: A Study of the Short Fiction (New York: Twayne, 1991), 40.
- 22.
Mansfield, “The Lady’s Maid,” 376.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Muriel Dimen, “Power, Sexuality and Intimacy,” in Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing, eds Alison M. Jaggar and Susan Bordo (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 34.
- 26.
Hints concerning sexuality are decoded in “The Lady’s Maid” by Julia van Gunsteren; see Julia van Gunsteren, Katherine Mansfield and Literary Impressionism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), 234.
- 27.
Mansfield, “The Lady’s Maid,” 380.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
See Adrian Hunter, The Cambridge Introduction to the Short Story in English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 80.
- 30.
This story was written literally in the wake of some of the most devastating damages to civilian life of the war. The Blitz—from September 1940 to May 1941—saw 60,000 killed, half in London.
- 31.
Maroula Joannou, Women’s Writing, Englishness and National and Cultural Identity: The Mobile Woman and the Migrant Voice, 1938–62 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 29.
- 32.
The lady’s maid occupied a function also espoused in France as the maid-of-the-bedroom resulting in the Anglicisation of the term “chambermaid” (OED online).
- 33.
Elizabeth Bowen, “Oh… Madam,” The Collected Stories (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980), 579.
- 34.
For a thorough account of the means by which the psychology of wartime is represented in the literature of the time, see Alan Munton, English Fiction in the Second World War (London: Faber, 1989).
- 35.
This evocative phrase and a discussion of Bowen’s wartime London (from her essay in The Demon Lover) is picked up by numerous commentators, including Deborah Parsons, Maroula Joannou and Lawrence Philips. See Lawrence Philips, The Swarming Streets: Twentieth-Century Literary Representations of London (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), 84; Deborah Parsons, Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City and Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 201; and Joannou, Women’s Writing, 32 (see note 31).
- 36.
Anne Besnault-Levita, “The Dramaturgy of Voice in Five Modernist Short Fictions: Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Canary’, ‘The Lady’s Maid’ and ‘Late at Night’, Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘Oh, Madam…’ and Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Evening Party’.” Journal of the Short Story in English 51 (Autumn, 2008): 81–96.
- 37.
Bowen, “Oh… Madam,” 579.
- 38.
Bowen herself directly experienced the homelessness and nomadism of London life during periods of bombing, viewing too the ruins and “stumps” of the city.
- 39.
Bowen, “Oh… Madam,” 581.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Ibid., 584.
- 43.
Ibid., 582.
- 44.
Ibid., 583.
- 45.
Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
- 46.
Juliet Gardiner, Wartime Britain 1939–1945 (London: Headline Review, 2004).
- 47.
In December 1941, the National Service Act (no. 2) made the conscription of women legal. By mid-1943, almost 90% of single women and 80% of married women were employed in essential work for the war effort. See Carol Harris, “Women under Fire in World War Two,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwtwo/women_at_war_01.shtml (last accessed April 2, 2018).
- 48.
David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London: Picador, 1991).
- 49.
Mollie Panter-Downes, “Cut Down the Trees,” in Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes (London: Persephone Books, 2008), 145. This story is also available from The New Yorker archive online http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1943-09-04#folio=016 (last accessed April 2, 2018).
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
This was a pattern that was replicated all over the UK, with houses requisitioned for use by troops and evacuees and as hospitals; see David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, 1991 (see note 47).
- 52.
Panter-Downes, “Cut Down the Trees,” 147.
- 53.
Ibid.
- 54.
Ibid., 145.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Nancy. 1987. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beeton, Isabella. 1861. The Book of the Household Management. London: S. O. Beeton.
Besnault-Levita, Anne. 2008. The Dramaturgy of Voice in Five Modernist Short Fictions: Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Canary’, ‘The Lady’s Maid’ and ‘Late at Night’, Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘Oh, Madam…’ and Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Evening Party’. Journal of the Short Story in English 51: 81–96.
Bowen, Elizabeth. 1980. The Collected Stories. London: Jonathan Cape.
Cannadine, David. 1991. The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. London: Picador.
Crane, Diana. 2000. Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender and Identity in Clothing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Delap, Lucy. 2011. Knowing Their Place: Domestic Service in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Derry, T.K., and Thomas Leckie Jarman. 1979. Modern Britain: Life and Work Through Two Centuries of Change. London: John Murray.
Dimen, Muriel. 1989. Power, Sexuality and Intimacy. In Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing, ed. Alison M. Jaggar and Susan R. Bordo, 34–51. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Gardiner, Juliet. 2004. Wartime Britain 1939–1945. London: Headline Review.
Harris, Carol. Women Under Fire in World War Two. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwtwo/women_at_war_01.shtml. Accessed 2 Apr 2018.
Horn, Pamela. 2011. Knowing Their Place: Life Below Stairs in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hunter, Adrian. 2007. The Cambridge Introduction to the Short Story in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Joannou, Maroula. 2012. Women’s Writing, Englishness and National and Cultural Identity: The Mobile Woman and the Migrant Voice, 1938–1962. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kimber, Geri. 2014. Katherine Mansfield and the Art of the Short Story. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lassner, Phyllis. 1991. Elizabeth Bowen: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne.
Light, Alison. 2010. Mrs Woolf and the Servants: The Hidden Heart of Domestic Service. London: Fig Tree.
Mansfield, Katherine. 1966. Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield. London: Constable.
McKibbin, Ross. 1998. Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morrow, Patrick D. 1993. Katherine Mansfield’s Fiction. Madison: Popular Press.
Munton, Alan. 1989. English Fiction in the Second World War. London: Faber.
Panter-Downes, Mollie. 2008. Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes. London: Persephone Books.
Parsons, Deborah. 2000. Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City and Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Philips, Lawrence. 2004. The Swarming Streets: Twentieth Century Literary Representations of London. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Robbins, Bruce. 2014. [Review of] Mary Wilson’s The Labors of Modernism; Domesticity, Servants and Authorship in Modernist Fiction. Woolf Studies Annual 20: 124–127.
Summers, Anne. 1998. Public Functions, Private Premises: Female Professional Identity and the Domestic-Service Paradigm in Britain, c. 1850–1930. In Borderlines: Genders and Identities in War and Peace 1870–1930, ed. Billie Melman, 353–376. London: Routledge.
Todd, Selina. 2009. Domestic Service and Class Relations in Britain 1900–1950. Past and Present 203: 181–204.
van Gunsteren, Julia. 1990. Katherine Mansfield and Literary Impressionism. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Wilson, Mary. 2013. The Labors of Modernism; Domesticity, Servants and Authorship in Modernist Fiction. Farnham: Ashgate.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fenge, A. (2018). “Another Class”: The Lady’s Maid in Short Stories 1920–1950. In: Leonardi, B. (eds) Intersections of Gender, Class, and Race in the Long Nineteenth Century and Beyond. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96770-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96770-7_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-96769-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96770-7
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)