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Title: What the Butler Saw: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Servant Problem
Author: E.S. Turner
Genre: History (mostly British)
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: A historical analysis of the relationship between British servants and their employers.
Thoughts: While I've seen a lot of this information before, scattered across various works, this is a nice summary of how the relationship between masters and servants in Britain's notoriously rigid class system has changed over history. There's a little bit contrasting American situations as well, although almost nothing about how any of this played out on the Continent, let alone elsewhere. Also, the blinkers of the 1960s (when this was originally written, for all that a few lines tacked on have tried to update it) gives this writing its own historical value.
There's a lot of interesting tidbits, from tables of wages to Great House servants' tea rituals to ladies' maids' duties extending to pimple removal. Quite a lot of this is presented through anecdotes, which keeps the text from becoming too dry, but often leads to it being rather rambling. The author has tried to organize his thoughts, but they do have a way of escaping from him at times.
Certain racial attitudes, including referring to all Irish maids as a uniform block of dull "Bridgets", are a little grating (although he tries--not really successfully, but tries--to handle the fashion of the "black boy" sensitively).
It's the kind of topic that can be very interesting if you're already interested, and a valuable resource to armchair historians. If your ears did not immediately perk up upon hearing the topic, it's not absorbing enough to drag you in, though.
Author: E.S. Turner
Genre: History (mostly British)
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: A historical analysis of the relationship between British servants and their employers.
Thoughts: While I've seen a lot of this information before, scattered across various works, this is a nice summary of how the relationship between masters and servants in Britain's notoriously rigid class system has changed over history. There's a little bit contrasting American situations as well, although almost nothing about how any of this played out on the Continent, let alone elsewhere. Also, the blinkers of the 1960s (when this was originally written, for all that a few lines tacked on have tried to update it) gives this writing its own historical value.
There's a lot of interesting tidbits, from tables of wages to Great House servants' tea rituals to ladies' maids' duties extending to pimple removal. Quite a lot of this is presented through anecdotes, which keeps the text from becoming too dry, but often leads to it being rather rambling. The author has tried to organize his thoughts, but they do have a way of escaping from him at times.
Certain racial attitudes, including referring to all Irish maids as a uniform block of dull "Bridgets", are a little grating (although he tries--not really successfully, but tries--to handle the fashion of the "black boy" sensitively).
It's the kind of topic that can be very interesting if you're already interested, and a valuable resource to armchair historians. If your ears did not immediately perk up upon hearing the topic, it's not absorbing enough to drag you in, though.
