Servants and Paternalism in the Works of Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Gaskell
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A01=Julie Nash
Author_Julie Nash
Captain Brown
Cassells Household Guide
Castle Rackrent
Category=DSBF
Edgeworth's Irish Novels
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Gaskell's Depictions
Gaskell's Treatment
Gaskell’s Depictions
Gosford Park
Important Servant Characters
Independent Women
Irish Peasantry
Lady Dashfort
Lady Davenant
Lady Delacour
Late Eighteenth Century Ireland
Lord Colambre
Material Considerations
Miss Jenkyns
Nineteenth Century British Society
Nineteenth Century Women Writers
Sir Condy
Sir Kit
Social Paternalism
Sylvia's Lovers
Sylvia’s Lovers
Thady Quirk
Wet Nurses
Product details
- ISBN 9781138620513
- Weight: 60g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jun 2020
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Writing during periods of dramatic social change, Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Gaskell were both attracted to the idea of radical societal transformation at the same time that their writings express nostalgia for a traditional, paternalistic ruling class. The author shows how this tension is played out especially through the characters of servants in short fiction and novels such as Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Belinda, and Helen and Gaskell's North and South and Cranford. Servant characters, the author contends, enable these writers to give voice to the contradictions inherent in the popular paternalistic philosophy of their times because the situation of domestic servitude itself embodies such inconsistencies. Servants, whose labor was essential to the economic and social function of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British society, made up the largest category of workers in England by the nineteenth century and yet were expected to be socially invisible. At the same time, they lived in the same houses as their masters and mistresses and were privy to the most intimate details of their lives. Both Edgeworth and Gaskell created servant characters who challenge the social hierarchy, thus exposing the potential for dehumanization and corruption inherent in the paternalistic philosophy. the author's study opens up important avenues for future scholars of women's fiction in the nineteenth century.
Julie Nash
