Servants a downstairs history of Britain from the nineteenth century to modern times
A compassionate and discerning exploration of the complex relationship between the server, the served, and the world they lived in, Servants opens a window onto British society from the Edwardian period to the present.
| Main Author: | Lethbridge, Lucy (Author) |
|---|---|
| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, N.Y. :
W. W. Norton & Company,
2013.
|
| Edition: | First American Edition. |
| Subjects: |
Table of Contents:
- 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
- "
- The sacred trust. The ideal village ; "Silent, obsequious, and omnipresent" ; Bowing and scraping
- 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
- 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"
- 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
- "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."