Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1983. This book cuts across the class boundaries of traditionally separate fields of social history. It investigates the social origins of servants, their incomes, their marriage and family patterns, their career patterns, their possibilities for social mobility, their political activities, and their criminality. But it also investigates the history of the family and domestic life in France in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, for servants were, at least until the rise of the affectionate nuclear family in the middle of the eighteenth century, considered part of the families of those they served. Finally, this book is also an essay on the history of social relationships in the ancien régime, not only those between masters and servants but also the broader relationships between the ruling elite and the lower classes. The introduction gives basic facts about the composition of households during the Old Regime and explores the attitudes and assu
Table of ContentsList of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction: Domestic Service in the Old Regime
Part I. Servants
Chapter 2. The Servants' World: Household and Housework
Chapter 3. Servants' Private Lives
Chapter 4. The Psychology of Servanthood: Servants' Attitudes Toward Their Masters
Part II. Masters and Servants
Chapter 5. The Psychology of Mastership: Masters' Attitudes Toward Their Servants
Chapter 6. Sexual Relationships Between Master and Servant
Chapter 7. Relationships Between Servants and Their Masters' Children
Chapter 8. Epilogue: The Revolution and After
Notes
Bibliography
Index
