Friendship and Domestic Service

Eliza Oldham (c.1820–92) worked as a general maid in Rochdale and Halifax from the 1840s to the 1870s. A set of her letters to a wealthy relation of two of her employers, Helen Priestman Bright Clark (1840–1927), has been preserved, indicating their close friendship. This article asks what kind of friendship was possible in such a socially and economically unequal relationship, and what it might tell us about class identities and class contest. It locates the basis of this friendship in the emotional labour involved in domestic service, alongside the complex intersection of work, family and community life with larger arenas of radical and gender politics

CONTEST · Economics · Economy · Epistemology · Friendship · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Scottish History and National Identity · Social Psychology