Victorian Servants, Class, and the Politics of Literacy

Emotions, Sensations, and Victorian Working‐Class Readers

“…As the preface to the first volume of The Servants’ Magazine (1838) reveals: “we are quite aware that ‘knowledge is power.’ … Servants are now fond of reading, and this is well; but it is of vast importance that what they read should be adapted to promote their ideal welfare, to render them more useful in their station, more contented with the arrangements of a kind Providence which have placed them in it” (qtd. in Fernandez 9). Servants’ literary taste is to be cultivated for facilitating domestic servitude, rather than avoiding their obligations within the household.…”

“…Viewed from this perspective, servant literacy was the focal point for an examination of class relations. As Jean Fernandez contends, “[i]f literacy was a distinguishing signifier of respectability, then its acquisition by servants signaled their assent to the rising cultural hegemony of England's middle classes.” And yet, the improprieties of reading could give rise to “the insidious powers of cultural contamination” (Fernandez 4). For this reason, the reading material for servants should be controlled so as to guide them to fulfill their obligations and serve the interests of their employers.…”

“…The servant's self‐absorption in reading indicates her “vulnerability to textual influence, deaf and blind to all other stimuli in her immediate environment” (Flint 4). Thus, Punch 's assessment of a servant's reading addiction constitutes an attempt to show how the lower class's consumption of entertaining reading matter is inextricably linked with “a cultural obscenity” or “a specter of revolution” (Fernandez 4). Even more tellingly, perhaps, the widespread phenomenon of increased servant literacy illuminates middle‐class anxieties over the revolutionary power of working‐class literacy that pollutes the domestic sphere and blurs class boundaries.…”

“… Literacy was measured by one's ability to sign his or her name in a marriage register. In 1840, 35% of men and nearly 50% of women could not produce a signature (Fernandez 3). Afterward, the percentage of illiteracy was reduced thanks to the lower class's improving access to schooling.…”

"“For the look of the thing”: middle-class consumerism in the Mayhew Brothers’ Living for Appearances and the Greatest Plague of Life"

“…On the publication of Living for Appearances, seeHumpherys (1977), p. 228. Humpherys also cites an 1850 American edition bearing the title The Fear of the World; Or, Living for Appearances; in personal correspondence, she has suggested this was probably a pirated edition.7 Brief commentaries are mostly to be found in general discussions of Victorian literature and culture -for instance,Fernandez (2010) comments on The Greatest Plague of Life within a discussion of servant literacy (see pp. 11-12); andChamberlain (2014) considers the novel within a discussion of the representation of servants' bodies (see pp.…”