Knowing Their Place
Domestic service in twentieth-century Britain
Published on 10. July 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
278 pages
978-0-19-871824-6 (ISBN)
Description
Historians have traditionally seen domestic service as an obsolete or redundant sector from the middle of the twentieth century. Knowing Their Place challenges this by linking the early twentieth-century employment of maids and cooks to later practices of employing au pairs, mothers' helps, and cleaners. Lucy Delap tells the story of lives and labour within British homes, from great houses to suburbs and slums, and charts the interactions of servants and employers along with the intense controversies and emotions they inspired.
Knowing Their Place also examines the employment of men and migrant workers, as well as the role of laughter and erotic desire in shaping domestic service. The memory of domestic service and the role of the past in shaping and mediating the present is examined through heritage and televisual sources, from Upstairs, Downstairs to The 1900 House. Drawing from advice manuals, magazines, novels, cinema, memoirs, feminist tracts, and photographs, this fascinating book points to new directions in cultural history through its engagement in innovative areas such as the history of emotions and cultural memory. Through its attention to the contemporary rise in the employment of domestic workers, Knowing Their Place sets modern Britain in a new and compelling historical context.
Knowing Their Place also examines the employment of men and migrant workers, as well as the role of laughter and erotic desire in shaping domestic service. The memory of domestic service and the role of the past in shaping and mediating the present is examined through heritage and televisual sources, from Upstairs, Downstairs to The 1900 House. Drawing from advice manuals, magazines, novels, cinema, memoirs, feminist tracts, and photographs, this fascinating book points to new directions in cultural history through its engagement in innovative areas such as the history of emotions and cultural memory. Through its attention to the contemporary rise in the employment of domestic workers, Knowing Their Place sets modern Britain in a new and compelling historical context.
Reviews / Votes
An ambitious study, which corrects a number of easy assumptions... contains wonderful material and much insight. * Alison Light, Times Literary Supplement * Knowing Their Place is that rare historical monograph that is a pleasure to read from beginning to end. It has the potential to be valuable in different ways at many levels of scholarship: to researchers in the fields of labor history and of womens history, in graduate seminars, and in the undergraduate classroom. * Jamie Bronstein, Journal of British Studies * [a] richly nuanced account ... excellent * Laura Schwartz, History Workshop Journal * Delap's book, dense with image and insight, helps us to think about these questions - who cleans, cooks, does the washing and childcare, how much are they paid and valued without turning away. * Sally Alexander, Twentieth Century British History * this is a marvellous book a deftly researched and adroitly argued a that offers a new image of the relationship between domestic service and British culture in the twentieth century. It shows the richness and depth that cultural history can achieve if written with an eye to emotional experience as well as popular representation. Its particular triumph lies in the way that it successfully thinks through the relationship between experience and culture a showing the connections between the real and imagined worlds a and how these are inextricably interlinked. * Jane Hamlett, Labour History Review *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
19 black and white halftones
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
427 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-871824-6 (9780198718246)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Lucy Delap is a social and cultural historian with research interests in feminism, class, religion, and gender. Her book The Feminist Avant-Garde: Transatlantic Encounters of the early twentieth century was published in 2007 and won the 2008 Women's History Network Prize. She co-edited The Politics of Domestic Authority in Britain since 1800 (2009), contributed to Feminist Media History (2010), and has published widely on British and American feminism. She was educated in London, Swaziland and Cambridge, and taught at the University of Cambridge until moving to King's College London in 2013.
Content
Introduction ; 1. Twentieth Century Servants ; 2. Servant-Keepers and the Management of Servants ; 3. 'Doing for Oneself': the Evolving Servantless Home ; 4. Kitchen-Sink Laughter: Domestic Service Humour ; 5. 'The Good, the Bad, and the Spicy': Servants in Pornography and Erotica ; 6. Heritage Nostalgia: Domestic Service Remembered and Performed ; Conclusion ; Bibliography