Labours lost
Subtitle: domestic service and the making of modern England
By: Carolyn Steedman.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780521516372
Subjects: Domestics -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Country homes -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 18th century
Description: "This is a unique account of the hidden history of servants and their employers in late eighteenth-century England and of how servants thought about and articulated their resentments. It is a book which encompasses state formation and the maidservant pounding away at dirty nappies in the back kitchen; taxes on the servant's labour and the knives he cleaned, the water he fetched, and the privy he shovelled out. Carolyn Steedman shows how deeply entwined all of these entities, objects and people were in the imagination of those doing the shovelling and pounding and in the political philosophies that attempted to make sense of it all. Rather than fitting domestic service into conventional narratives of industrial revolution' or the making of the English working class' she offers instead a profound re-reading of this formative period in English social history which restores the servants' lost labours to their rightful place"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Prologue: the servant's dream; 1. Introduction: a new view of society; 2. Servants numberless: theories of labour and property; 3. Frances Hamilton's labour; Necessity: 4. Lord Mansfield's women; 5. In a free state; Horses: 6. The law of everyday life; 7. Policing society; servant-stories: 8. Servants and childcare: Ann Mead's murder; 9. Food for thought; 10. An ode on a dishclout; 11. A servant's wages; Stays: 12. Conclusion: the needs of things.