High life below stairs: Servants and masters in eighteenth century fiction

This study examines how servants invert and reverse two symbolically opposed realms, above and below stairs, that order the domestic space of many eighteenth-century fictional houses. Because servants may confuse the normal vertical distance between high and low characters, they have the potential to relativize the emotional, social, and linguistic hierarchy that structures domestic relations. Traditionally associated with the threshold, servants cross between geographic realms, upstairs and downstairs, house and street, parlor and kitchen, which consistently represent social difference in eighteenth-century novels. Liminal or hybrid figures who temporarily negate distance between the ruler and the ruled, servants thus suggest moments in the text where characters experience class struggle.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Soliday, Mary Anne

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dussinger, John A.

• Literature, English

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1990 Soliday, Mary Anne

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9026324
(UMI)AAI9026324

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/23125