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

我的项目将首次直接探讨在1870年至1914年间，在以英语为母语的世界里，家庭佣人在中产阶级妇女大规模进入专业工作中的中心地位。我的研究将集中在六个关键问题上：家庭佣人如何促进其女雇主进入正规的高等教育和工作？我们如何更充分地阐明家庭佣人本身的作用？女性如何驾驭她们不断演变的双重角色，既是家庭的情妇，又是专业工人？这些关系如何影响现代英国的跨阶级关系？佣人和雇主如何作为一个家庭成员驾驭家庭。共享空间，以及这如何塑造了国内隐私的理想？在国外工作在多大程度上改变了佣人和雇主的关系以及这些人所做的工作？尽管佣人队伍的规模很大，这一职业群体在妇女工作史上占有一定的背景地位。尽管家庭佣人得到了短暂的承认，但很少与妇女的职业化联系在一起讨论(麦卡锡，2020)。施瓦茨讨论了选举权运动对服务的依赖(施瓦茨，2019年)。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(Light，2007)。我的项目考虑了15种不同的关系，将焦点转移到19世纪末，那是中产阶级女性涌入工作和教育的关键时刻。在这个时代，对工作的研究优先考虑机构工作场所：相反，这个项目突出了家作为工作的关键地点，并询问了此类工作蓬勃发展的领域，如社会改革、写作和慈善事业。我会争辩说，尽管仆人很少成为一个正式的集体，但他们仍然在社会中发挥着作用。我的项目将大量利用个人写作和通信，并通过咨询文献、回忆录、期刊、小说和视觉文化等来源丰富。它还将从妇女图书馆少有的亲笔签名书信收藏和女孩友好协会的记录中提取，以及与一些最早的大学女性校友有关的收藏。英国妇女移民协会的记录将特别令人感兴趣：该协会信件中的一个主要讨论点是，在国际舞台上，为中产阶级女性提供好佣人的必要性。这项研究将集中讨论佣人在史学辩论中对劳动力扩张的地震影响。这个项目解决了今天仍然相关的问题：尽管家政服务在第一次世界大战后通常被描述为衰落，但家政清洁仍然是工薪阶层妇女从事的工作领域，对许多家庭来说，雇用清洁工仍然是社会地位的象征。

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.