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Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century Britain PDF

236 Pages·2008·1.16 MB·English
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Preview Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century Britain

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Published 2009 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Straub, Kristina, 1951– Domestic affairs : intimacy, eroticism, and violence between servants and masters in eighteenth-century Britain / Kristina Straub. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8018-9049-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8018-9049-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. English literature—18th century—History and criticism. 2. Domestics in literature. 3. Master and servant in literature. 4. Social classes in literature. 5. Group identity in literature. 6. Gender identity in literature. 7. Domestics—Great Britain—Social conditions—18th century. 8. Family— Economic aspects—Great Britain—History—18th century. I. Title. PR448.D66S77 2008 820.9%3552—dc22 2008014660 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid-free, and our jackets and covers are printed on paper with recycled content. ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................C....................o..............n................t......e............n................t........s.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Acknowledgments vii 1 The ‘‘Servant Problem’’ and the Family 1 2 ‘‘In the Posture of Children’’: Servants, Family Pedagogy, and Sexuality 19 3 Interpreting the Woman Servant: Pamela and Elizabeth Canning, 1740 to 1760 47 4 Dangerous Intimacies: Roxana, Amy, and the Crimes of Elizabeth Brownrigg, 1724 to 1767 83 5 Performing the Manservant, 1730 to 1760 110 6 Men Servants’ Sexuality in the Novel, 1740 to 1794 141 Conclusion: Notes of a Footman on the ‘‘Servant Problem,’’ 1790 178 Notes 191 Index 215 This page intentionally left blank ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................A................c............k..............n..............o..............w..................l......e..............d..............g............m......................e..............n..............t........s.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. I owe thanks to many colleagues who read parts of this book and improved it with their suggestions and comments. Jon Klancher gave me helpful and generous feedback on an early version combining chapters 1 and 2, as did Michael Witmore on what became chapter 2. Laura Rosenthal and Mita Choudhury gave me strong editorial advice on my reading of the Elizabeth Brownrigg materials, and Jocelyn Harris and Lisa Zunshine improved portions of the chapter on Pamela. Daniel Quinn gave me wonderful writing advice on the Footman’s Gallery portions of chapter 5. George Haggerty also helped me bring some order to that chapter, which never would have made it into their hands if Michael Chemers had not encouraged me. Most importantly, I cannot thank Jill Campbell enough for her heroic reading of the entire manuscript for the Johns Hopkins University Press; Jill, your advice has made this book as good as I could make it. I am always in the debt of my students at Carnegie Mellon University. They keep me asking the hardest questions and searching for the strongest answers. I particularly thank the members of my Feminist Cultural Studies seminar, upon whom I inflicted piles of nearly illegible photocopies of the Canning materials. Rebecca May, especially, was a trooper in reading and making sense of the contra- dictory documents in this case. I owe a special debt to Jad Smith, who can talk about Pamela and garden with me at the same time. Thanks also to my research assistant, Julianne Mentzer, for her help with the index. My colleagues among the faculty and administration at Carnegie Mellon Uni- versity have given me an invigorating and supportive work environment for the past twenty years. Ours is a community that respects expertise and has a healthy intolerance for facile claims to knowledge. David Kaufer, the head of the English Department, and John Lehoczky, dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, have mentored and supported me in this honest and demanding institution. I wish to acknowledge Bucknell University Press, Routledge University Press, the Modern Language Association, and Cambridge University Press for publish- viii acknowledgments ing portions of this book in different forms and for different educational and scholarly purposes. The editors and staff at the Johns Hopkins University Press have been patient, professional, and helpful. I thank Michael Lonegro for his tolerance during some of my worst senior moments and Kathleen Capels for the intelligence and bravery with which she took on the herculean task of cleaning up my prose. The Folger Shakespeare Library let me teach a seminar on eighteenth-century servants and join their wonderful community for all too short a time. I owe much to the graciousness and insightfulness of the students in that seminar, particularly the historians, who helped me achieve a more critical and nuanced sense of evidence and data. Another community that has given me vital support throughout the course of completing this project is the wonderful band of theater scholars assembled by Joseph Roach and Maggie Powell in the ‘‘Anti-Theatricality’’ conference at Yale and its subsequent reunion at the Lewis Day Walpole Library, in particular Lisa Freeman, whose ideas about theater and so much else have been important to my thinking about this book over the years. I could not have continued in eighteenth-century studies without the many years of friendship and intellectual support that I have gained from the members of the American Society of Eighteenth Century Studies. Talking, laughing, listen- ing, thinking, and eating with you over the last twenty-four years has given me a community that continually tells me that our work is worth doing. There are too many of you to thank individually—and you know who you are—but I would be remiss not to single out Sue Lanser, who encouraged me to continue on with this project when I had begun to doubt that it would ever be publishable. My family has grown and changed since I began working on this book. My little daughters Bailey and Evie Clark are now taller than I am, and I have found a loving, intellectually challenging, and endlessly entertaining spouse in Carol Goldburg. The three of you are what keep me going in everything that I do, including the ‘‘inconvenience’’ of writing this book. Along with Carol’s compan- ionship, I have gained the love and support of the rather extensive Goldburg/Levy clan; I cannot believe my good luck at having been adopted by you all, especially my mother-outlaw, Barbara Goldburg. Particular thanks to my brother-outlaw, Steve Summerday, who interrupted a perfectly lovely vacation in the Colorado mountains to ask the question that made me pull my scattered thoughts together: ‘‘Kristina, what is your book about?’’ I would finally like to acknowledge some long-time, constant companions. My sister Suzy Currey was my fellow traveler in aging while I was writing this book, as acknowledgments ix she has been and, I hope, will be in every other development of my life. Nat Anderson has been and will always be on the other end of a phone line when I need her. My mother, Mimi Straub, gave me enough of her toughness and independence to finish projects like this one. And although he is no longer around to read this, I thank my father, Bud Straub, for his early lessons in the playful ways of words.

Description:
From Daniel Defoe's Family Instructor to William Godwin's political novel Caleb Williams, literature written for and about servants tells a hitherto untold story about the development of sexual and gender ideologies in the early modern period. This original study explores the complicated relationshi
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