Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday is a holiday all English servants traditionally had off. This seems like a generous tradition (and concession) by employers, and it suggests that the life of these workers, who otherwise lived with their employers, was not necessarily a terrible one. Yet as the novel explores, the tradition belies the fundamentally unjust and inhumane relationship between this servant class and the families who employ them. Most obviously, there is a huge disparity in wealth and income. Jane is initially shocked by the fact that each of the dead Niven boys had “a whole room, full of furniture, each” (104). Most servants, like her, own little more than the clothes on their backs or what they can pack into a small suitcase. As Jane also observes, “[B]eing a maid […] you lived in someone else’s house, you didn’t have a home of your own to go to” (103). Servants were not able to rent their own room or apartment, let alone buy a house, but had to live in a place that their employers directly owned and controlled. This meant they had little independence or privacy.

It also meant a lack of leisure. Always at the call of their employers, the novel’s servants are never really free from work.