Domestic servants, professionalisation and the women's emancipation movement, 1870-1914

家庭佣人、职业化和妇女解放运动，1870-1914 年

• 批准号: 2726945
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2726945
• 关键词: Domestic; servants; professionalisation; women; emancipation

My project will provide the first direct exploration of the centrality of domestic servants to the mass movement of middle-class women into professional work in the anglophone world between 1870 and 1914.My research will focus on six key questions:How did domestic servants facilitate the move of their female employers into formal higher education and work?How can we more adequately illuminate the agency of domestic servants in their own right?How did women navigate their evolving dual-roles as both mistresses of households and as professional workers?How did these relationships influence cross-class relations in modern Britain?How did servants and employers navigate the home as a shared space and how did this shape ideals of privacy at home?To what extent did working abroad alter servant and employer relationships and the work these individuals performed?Despite the size of the servant workforce, this occupational group occupies a background position in histories of women's work. Although they are briefly acknowledged, domestic servants are rarely discussed in conjunction with women's professionalisation (McCarthy, 2020). Schwartz discusses the reliance of the suffrage movement on service (Schwartz, 2019). Microhistories, such as the study of Virginia Woolf and her servants, have provided insight into the lives of specific individuals (Light, 2007). My project, which considers fifteen different relationships, shifts the focus to the late nineteenth century, the critical moment when there was an influx of middle-class women into work and education. Studies ofwork during this era have prioritised institutional workplaces: this project instead foregrounds the home as a key site of work, and interrogates fields in which such work flourished, such as social reform, writing and charitable endeavours. I will argue that although servants rarely acted as a formal collective, they were still in a position to exert agency in society.My project will draw heavily from personal writing and correspondence, enriched by sources such as advice literature, memoirs, periodicals, fiction and visual culture. It will also draw from the little-tapped Autograph Letters Collection and records of the Girls' Friendly Society at the Women's Library, alongside collections in relation to the alumnae of some of the earliest women at universities. The records of the British Women's Emigration Association will be of particular interest: one main point of discussion in the association's correspondence was the necessity of good servants for middle-class women on the international stage.This research will centralise the seismic impact servants had on the expansion of the workforce in historiographical debates. This project addresses questions still relevant today: although domestic service is commonly described as declining following the First World War, domestic cleaning is still a field of work occupied by working-class women, and employing cleaners remains a societal status symbol for many households.

我的项目将提供第一个直接探索的中心地位的家庭佣工的中产阶级妇女进入专业工作在英语世界的1870年和1914年之间的群众运动。我的研究将集中在六个关键问题：家庭佣工如何促进其女性雇主进入正规高等教育和工作？我们怎样才能更充分地说明家庭佣人本身的作用呢？女性如何驾驭她们不断演变的双重角色，既是家庭主妇，又是职业工人？这些关系如何影响现代英国的跨阶级关系？仆人和雇主是如何将家作为一个共享空间的，这又是如何塑造家庭隐私的理想的？在国外工作在多大程度上改变了仆人和雇主的关系以及这些人所从事的工作？尽管仆人劳动力的规模很大，但这一职业群体在妇女工作的历史上占据着背景地位。虽然家庭佣人得到了简要的承认，但很少与妇女的职业化一起讨论（麦卡锡，2020年）。施瓦茨讨论了选举权运动对服务的依赖（施瓦茨，2019）。微观历史，例如对弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫和她的仆人的研究，提供了对特定个人生活的洞察力（Light，2007）。我的项目考虑了十五种不同的关系，将重点转移到十九世纪末，当时中产阶级女性涌入工作和教育的关键时刻。在这一时期，对工作的研究优先考虑机构工作场所：这个项目将家庭作为工作的关键场所，并询问了这些工作蓬勃发展的领域，如社会改革，写作和慈善事业。我认为，尽管仆人很少作为一个正式的集体，但他们仍然能够在社会中发挥作用。我的项目将大量借鉴个人写作和通信，并通过咨询文献、回忆录、期刊、小说和视觉文化等来源来丰富。它还将借鉴很少开发的亲笔签名信件收藏和妇女图书馆女孩友好协会的记录，以及与大学最早的一些女性校友有关的收藏。英国妇女移民协会的记录将特别有趣：该协会的信件中的一个主要讨论点是在国际舞台上的中产阶级妇女的好仆人的必要性。这项研究将集中在历史编纂辩论中的地震影响的工人扩大。该项目解决了今天仍然相关的问题：虽然家政服务在第一次世界大战后通常被描述为下降，但家庭清洁仍然是工人阶级妇女的工作领域，雇用清洁工仍然是许多家庭的社会地位象征。