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Mrs Woolf and the Servants
Loathing, anger, shame - and deep affection: Virginia Woolf's relationship with her servants was central to her life. Like thousands of her fellow Britons she relied on live-in domestics for the most intimate of daily tasks. Her cook and parlour maid relieved her of the burden of housework and without them she might never have become a writer. But unlike many of her contemporaries Virginia Woolf was frequently tormented by her dependence on servants. Uniquely, she explored her violent, often vicious, feelings in her diaries, novels and essays. What, the reader might well wonder, was it like for the servants to live with a mistress who so hated giving her orders, and who could be generous and hostile by turns? Through the prism of the writer's life and work, Alison Light explores the volatile, emotional territory which is the hidden history of domestic service. Compared to most employers in Britain between the wars, Leonard and Virginia Woolf were free and easy. Life in the Bloomsbury circle of writers and artists was often fun. Yet despite being liberal in outlook, these were also households where the differences in upbringing and education were acute: employers and servants were still 'us' and 'them'. The women who worked for the Woolfs, like other domestic servants, have usually been relegated to the margins of history, yet unearthing their lives reveals fascinating stories: of Sophie Farrell, the Victorian cook and 'family treasure', who ended her days in a London bed-sit; Lottie Hope, the parlour maid, a foundling, who'd been left on a doorstep like a parcel; and Nellie Boxall, the Woolfs' cook, who was finally dismissed after sixteen years of rows and reconciliations, only to find herself a more glamorous job. Mrs Woolf and the Servants is a riveting and highly original study of one of Britain's greatest literary modernists. Ultimately, though, it is also a moving and eloquent testimony to the ways in which individual creativity always needs the support of others.
401 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 2, 2007
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May 15, 2016
Virginia Woolf is my bete noir. Especially after reading this book where the depths of her hypocrisy and height of her self-centredness are quite relevatory. VW had a genius for publicity for her public face and an equal capacity for keeping the her true moral repugnance of people with less money and 'breeding' than her hidden. Where does snobbery cross the line into racism? If they are all of the same race is it possible? Yes. If one regards the others almost as another race entirely, then it is. And that was VW.
VW's attitude towards work was that it was for others. Indeed in one of her novels, she has a character say of a young woman of 25, "but she looks so old", the reply, "Well she does work and that ages one". VW couldn't make a cup of tea for herself. Indeed she and her sister have to call in someone to show them how to light the gas stove so that they can. She lived a life cocooned from even the smallest amount of work by servants.
These servant classes she considered a lower form of human life which is a racist rather than snobbish way of thinking. She didn't feel they had finer feelings or the capacity for education beyong the basic. She was annoyed by these lumpen creatures necessary as they were. To her they existed to make the lives her 'liberal, avante-garde' Bloomsbury set, as free from the mundane aspects of living as possible so that they could think their uplifting thoughts, indulge their appetites for sex, art and extreme laziness to the full.
If you admire the writing, that is one thing, if you admire the writer and don't want your respect collapsing downwards into VW's obvious feet of clay, well mud really. Then you don't want to read this book by an expert on Virginia Woolf and her works.
VW is a 1-star character, but the servants and the writing by author Alison Light are deserving of a better rating, so three stars, but reluctantly given.
Revised and edited 15 May 2016
VW's attitude towards work was that it was for others. Indeed in one of her novels, she has a character say of a young woman of 25, "but she looks so old", the reply, "Well she does work and that ages one". VW couldn't make a cup of tea for herself. Indeed she and her sister have to call in someone to show them how to light the gas stove so that they can. She lived a life cocooned from even the smallest amount of work by servants.
These servant classes she considered a lower form of human life which is a racist rather than snobbish way of thinking. She didn't feel they had finer feelings or the capacity for education beyong the basic. She was annoyed by these lumpen creatures necessary as they were. To her they existed to make the lives her 'liberal, avante-garde' Bloomsbury set, as free from the mundane aspects of living as possible so that they could think their uplifting thoughts, indulge their appetites for sex, art and extreme laziness to the full.
If you admire the writing, that is one thing, if you admire the writer and don't want your respect collapsing downwards into VW's obvious feet of clay, well mud really. Then you don't want to read this book by an expert on Virginia Woolf and her works.
VW is a 1-star character, but the servants and the writing by author Alison Light are deserving of a better rating, so three stars, but reluctantly given.
Revised and edited 15 May 2016
February 7, 2021
3.5 stars
I think my reservations about this book stem from the fact that too often it feels like there are sections on 'Mrs Woolf' and sections on 'The Servants', and less of the text than I expected deals with the analysis of how the two intersect. I'd also say that this is a shorter book than might appear from the page count since there are two appendices and the main text ends at p.280.
With those comments out of the way, this seems like an overdue book that unpicks how early feminists lived in an uneasy gap between their political beliefs and their personal lives. Not just VW but also Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Vera Brittain are mentioned for the way in which they didn't just take servants, usually female, for granted to manage their homes and domestic lives but oppressed them (EBB made her maid leave her own baby at home while looking after EBB's baby in Italy), underpaid them, abused them, dehumanised them in writing and generally saw them as members of a generic underclass who were not and, possibly, would never be 'like us'.
Of course, VW - like other early feminists - were products of their own class-based, patriarchal value system but their blindness is extraordinarily eye-opening. I was reminded many times of Audre Lorde calling out a conference of white feminist academics and pointing out the extent to which their own hard-won career success was built on female workers, often from immigrant and poor backgrounds, doing their cleaning, nannying and domestic work - as Lorde so eloquently put it The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. What this book shows is the extent to which VW and her peer group of socialists, social activists, and Labour supporters were still in thrall to 'the master's tools'.
For me, this book spent too long rehearsing the well-known contours of VW's life. When Light does explore what the title intimates, however, there is some fascinating material - how the Bell family were reluctant to put in flush toilets because using a kind of human litter tray filled with ashes was fine when there were servants to do the dirty work (literally) of emptying it; that it wasn't out of the ordinary for grown adults to be unable to boil an egg or even light the stove to put a kettle on to boil without someone to do this for them; that basic domestic appliances didn't become common until the 1950s: 'even by 1945 only 20 per cent of British homes had an electric cooker, 15 per cent had a water-heater, 4 per cent a washing machine and a mere 2 per cent a fridge'.
The extraordinary intimacy that resulted is brought out well: all of VW's underwear was washed by servants, for example, something that she herself found intrusive (though, clearly, not enough to do her own washing...) and it wasn't until very late in her marriage that she and Leonard actually lived alone without servants sleeping in - something that may have been acceptable in big family homes with servants' floors but which became increasingly invasive in the smaller Bloomsbury flats with thin walls in which they lived.
This isn't, of course, a one-sided book and there is attention paid, too, to the conservative and reactionary views of older generations of servants who deplore younger women's flighty ways, desire for independence, and reluctance to accept the old standards of subservience.
Despite some issues, Light does a good job of putting figures on social inequalities and exploitation: the Woolfs, who thought themselves hard up, received about £430 pounds annual unearned income from their investments and before paid work, but paid their servants between £20-50 per year. It helps put in context Woolf's famous statement that for a woman to have the necessary independence to be a writer, she required £500 per year and a room of her own, ten times the amount she paid her own female domestic helpers - but, then, writing was clearly a reserved occupation in VW's mind, one not to be squandered on all those menial working women with whom she had such a complex relationship.
Virginia's public sympathy with the lives of poor women was always at odds with private recoil.
I think my reservations about this book stem from the fact that too often it feels like there are sections on 'Mrs Woolf' and sections on 'The Servants', and less of the text than I expected deals with the analysis of how the two intersect. I'd also say that this is a shorter book than might appear from the page count since there are two appendices and the main text ends at p.280.
With those comments out of the way, this seems like an overdue book that unpicks how early feminists lived in an uneasy gap between their political beliefs and their personal lives. Not just VW but also Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Vera Brittain are mentioned for the way in which they didn't just take servants, usually female, for granted to manage their homes and domestic lives but oppressed them (EBB made her maid leave her own baby at home while looking after EBB's baby in Italy), underpaid them, abused them, dehumanised them in writing and generally saw them as members of a generic underclass who were not and, possibly, would never be 'like us'.
Of course, VW - like other early feminists - were products of their own class-based, patriarchal value system but their blindness is extraordinarily eye-opening. I was reminded many times of Audre Lorde calling out a conference of white feminist academics and pointing out the extent to which their own hard-won career success was built on female workers, often from immigrant and poor backgrounds, doing their cleaning, nannying and domestic work - as Lorde so eloquently put it The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. What this book shows is the extent to which VW and her peer group of socialists, social activists, and Labour supporters were still in thrall to 'the master's tools'.
For me, this book spent too long rehearsing the well-known contours of VW's life. When Light does explore what the title intimates, however, there is some fascinating material - how the Bell family were reluctant to put in flush toilets because using a kind of human litter tray filled with ashes was fine when there were servants to do the dirty work (literally) of emptying it; that it wasn't out of the ordinary for grown adults to be unable to boil an egg or even light the stove to put a kettle on to boil without someone to do this for them; that basic domestic appliances didn't become common until the 1950s: 'even by 1945 only 20 per cent of British homes had an electric cooker, 15 per cent had a water-heater, 4 per cent a washing machine and a mere 2 per cent a fridge'.
The extraordinary intimacy that resulted is brought out well: all of VW's underwear was washed by servants, for example, something that she herself found intrusive (though, clearly, not enough to do her own washing...) and it wasn't until very late in her marriage that she and Leonard actually lived alone without servants sleeping in - something that may have been acceptable in big family homes with servants' floors but which became increasingly invasive in the smaller Bloomsbury flats with thin walls in which they lived.
This isn't, of course, a one-sided book and there is attention paid, too, to the conservative and reactionary views of older generations of servants who deplore younger women's flighty ways, desire for independence, and reluctance to accept the old standards of subservience.
Despite some issues, Light does a good job of putting figures on social inequalities and exploitation: the Woolfs, who thought themselves hard up, received about £430 pounds annual unearned income from their investments and before paid work, but paid their servants between £20-50 per year. It helps put in context Woolf's famous statement that for a woman to have the necessary independence to be a writer, she required £500 per year and a room of her own, ten times the amount she paid her own female domestic helpers - but, then, writing was clearly a reserved occupation in VW's mind, one not to be squandered on all those menial working women with whom she had such a complex relationship.
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February 14, 2020A blockbusting rollercoaster non-stop high octane adventure thriller: if you are only going to read one book about Virginia Woolf and the servants that she lived with this year; why not make it Mrs Woolf and the servants?
For me reading through and now in a hurry to type a review and return the book to the library, there were a few highlights. This is maybe for some a curious approach to Virginia Woolf - naturally she had servants people of her class did at that time (and do though they are less likely to be called servants) yet it turns out to to have all kinds of complexities, an obvious one is that while Woolf was relatively lacking in privilege in relation to men of her own class, she was highly privileged in relation to other women, indeed to most British men, while she wrote of her lack of formal education as a example of her disadvantage, she turned a blind eye to her free access to her father's library. "In Three Guineas, Virginia had written that 'the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected; that the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other'. She was describing the Victorian household ruled by the paterfamilias but she was also exploring the dialectic of master and slave more generally, of power and fear, which she believed was at theheart of sexual politics. In Woolf's account the tinpot dictator in the home was always male; aggression a masculine attribute. She thought her own caste, 'the daughters of educated men', the least powerful in history, unable even to take up paid work. They were dependent, vulnerable and sometimes servile, but their exclusion from power might also be a freedom. As non-participants in the 'great patriarchal machine' they could refuse its values and remain indifferent to its rituals; as outsiders who had once been victims they could refuse mastery over others." (p.266) which is all fair enough on its own terms I suppose, but on this occasion the Subaltern speaks in Agnes Smith, an unemployed weaver from Huddersfield who wrote Woolf a nine page letter. The two corresponded for a while, Agnes' letters to Woolf survive, allowing Alison Light to tell us that Virginia Woolf's literary aim was to "change the fantasy life of her peers; work from the inside out" (p.267) here we might remember how Woolf works with time and perception in her writing, her interiority, but the space for her to do her work was provided for her through her inherited investment income, her husband, and the servants who cleaned, cooked, and clothed (even coddled) Madame of whom Alison Light sings in this book. She looks at three in detail: Sophie Farrell the family cook from 1886, and Lottie Hope housemaid and cook & Nellie Boxall.
Farrell came from Lincolnshire as a young woman to work for Virginia's mother and father, women from the countryside were preferred as considered more reliable and if young malleable, than city women, or God forbid, Irish women. Four letters survive from Farrell to Virginia, in them she certainly performs the role of faithful old retainer very well, or perhaps that was simply how she felt, she remained with the Stephens and then was passed on to the children until she retired, Virginia sent her money which Farrell seems to have saved for own niece.
While considering Farrell and her career - Light constants two photographs one of Farrell, powerful forearms wielding a saucepan, mighty bosom barely constrained by her corset, and a plump face with a portrait of Julia Stephens (naturally taken by her aunt, pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron) who is slim and ethereal; the status division manifest in flesh.
Hope was a foundling who was brought up in something like a colony for orphans, though as in many places in the world today some of these orphans seemed to have been 'orphans' of the kind whose parents are very much alive, the law was supportive of Dr. Barnardo and co seizing the children of working class families and bringing them up if girls to be servants, if boys farm workers and if disabled in some way then farm workers in the Imperial colonies (p.96-99), in Surrey. She was highly strung, in need of reassurance and mothering, and prone to outbursts of temper - a kind of unacknowledged twin of Virginia herself (pp.154-5). The two had a stormy and mutually dependent relationship over decades.
Naturally this spills over into consideration of the house. The Victorian grand house has it's separate space for the servants, attic bedrooms and back stairs, a basement kitchen, their quarters curtained off to contain the smells of cooking. Built into the house is a demand for labour - fires to be swept clear and re-lit, bedpans or chamber-pots to be emptied and scoured clean, clothes to be mended and brushed (but perhaps sent out to a laundry to be washed). The house, Light suggests, is symbolic of the person to Virginia, the servants quarters represent the body, the family rooms the life of the mind and this forms part of Virginia's own hostile attitude to her own body re-enforced by the sexual abuse she received from her half-brother (p.74).
Later in Virginia's adult life the house and it's technologies were changing - once you have central heating and an adequate number of toilets then a certain amount of domestic work is reduced, the trickiest technology was the oven, the Victorian range required careful feeding with fuel and required great skill to use because of the difficulty of regulating the temperature. Technologies were a source of tension the employer might buy a modern appliance but might be reluctant to allow the inferior servant to use such a complex device, alternatively the employer might be content to employ servants rather than make the capital investment in a modern bathroom or oven. In such circumstances the servants were not so content. When the Woolfs moved to Monks House in Rodmell, East Sussex at first they had a hole in the garden with a plank over it to serve as a toilet, finding someone to clean this became a serious issue . The Woolfs had their baths (separately) in a tub behind a curtain in the kitchen, when they emerged Hope would give them their breakfast - having servants was a very intimate business it suggested a parent- child relationship but in which the child had all the authority, but this could be resented as overly intimate. Light relates how the woolfs frequently described themselves as having no servants at times in their lives when this translated as having no servants living in their house - they would still have a gardener and a woman to cook and clean - and though she left in the afternoon she would have already prepared them something to eat for the evening.
Even if the masters and mistresses had politics to the left of centre - as the Woolf's were, their attitudes, as Light shows us could be a long way from egalitarian she cites Vera Britten referring to her servants as a 'fifth column', I am inclined to think this as with Virginia's crapping about her servants to her sister Vanessa was a reflection of their feelings of insecurity and dependence upon the people that their cultivated lives depended upon. A wonder and pleasure of this book I felt was Alison Light's tone which came across to me as sympathetic and understanding towards both the servants and those they served. It would be easy and understandable to make fun of the Woolfs and their ilk. Overall the book does confirm my picture of the English nation as being snobbish, prejudiced and insecure, needing always some other group to feel superior over.
Anyway a book that explodes into the British obsessive concern over class, and riots through social history and politics and domestic appliances all through the prism of Virginia Woolf and the servants. A fantastic read.
For me reading through and now in a hurry to type a review and return the book to the library, there were a few highlights. This is maybe for some a curious approach to Virginia Woolf - naturally she had servants people of her class did at that time (and do though they are less likely to be called servants) yet it turns out to to have all kinds of complexities, an obvious one is that while Woolf was relatively lacking in privilege in relation to men of her own class, she was highly privileged in relation to other women, indeed to most British men, while she wrote of her lack of formal education as a example of her disadvantage, she turned a blind eye to her free access to her father's library. "In Three Guineas, Virginia had written that 'the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected; that the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other'. She was describing the Victorian household ruled by the paterfamilias but she was also exploring the dialectic of master and slave more generally, of power and fear, which she believed was at theheart of sexual politics. In Woolf's account the tinpot dictator in the home was always male; aggression a masculine attribute. She thought her own caste, 'the daughters of educated men', the least powerful in history, unable even to take up paid work. They were dependent, vulnerable and sometimes servile, but their exclusion from power might also be a freedom. As non-participants in the 'great patriarchal machine' they could refuse its values and remain indifferent to its rituals; as outsiders who had once been victims they could refuse mastery over others." (p.266) which is all fair enough on its own terms I suppose, but on this occasion the Subaltern speaks in Agnes Smith, an unemployed weaver from Huddersfield who wrote Woolf a nine page letter. The two corresponded for a while, Agnes' letters to Woolf survive, allowing Alison Light to tell us that Virginia Woolf's literary aim was to "change the fantasy life of her peers; work from the inside out" (p.267) here we might remember how Woolf works with time and perception in her writing, her interiority, but the space for her to do her work was provided for her through her inherited investment income, her husband, and the servants who cleaned, cooked, and clothed (even coddled) Madame of whom Alison Light sings in this book. She looks at three in detail: Sophie Farrell the family cook from 1886, and Lottie Hope housemaid and cook & Nellie Boxall.
Farrell came from Lincolnshire as a young woman to work for Virginia's mother and father, women from the countryside were preferred as considered more reliable and if young malleable, than city women, or God forbid, Irish women. Four letters survive from Farrell to Virginia, in them she certainly performs the role of faithful old retainer very well, or perhaps that was simply how she felt, she remained with the Stephens and then was passed on to the children until she retired, Virginia sent her money which Farrell seems to have saved for own niece.
While considering Farrell and her career - Light constants two photographs one of Farrell, powerful forearms wielding a saucepan, mighty bosom barely constrained by her corset, and a plump face with a portrait of Julia Stephens (naturally taken by her aunt, pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron) who is slim and ethereal; the status division manifest in flesh.
Hope was a foundling who was brought up in something like a colony for orphans, though as in many places in the world today some of these orphans seemed to have been 'orphans' of the kind whose parents are very much alive, the law was supportive of Dr. Barnardo and co seizing the children of working class families and bringing them up if girls to be servants, if boys farm workers and if disabled in some way then farm workers in the Imperial colonies (p.96-99), in Surrey. She was highly strung, in need of reassurance and mothering, and prone to outbursts of temper - a kind of unacknowledged twin of Virginia herself (pp.154-5). The two had a stormy and mutually dependent relationship over decades.
Naturally this spills over into consideration of the house. The Victorian grand house has it's separate space for the servants, attic bedrooms and back stairs, a basement kitchen, their quarters curtained off to contain the smells of cooking. Built into the house is a demand for labour - fires to be swept clear and re-lit, bedpans or chamber-pots to be emptied and scoured clean, clothes to be mended and brushed (but perhaps sent out to a laundry to be washed). The house, Light suggests, is symbolic of the person to Virginia, the servants quarters represent the body, the family rooms the life of the mind and this forms part of Virginia's own hostile attitude to her own body re-enforced by the sexual abuse she received from her half-brother (p.74).
Later in Virginia's adult life the house and it's technologies were changing - once you have central heating and an adequate number of toilets then a certain amount of domestic work is reduced, the trickiest technology was the oven, the Victorian range required careful feeding with fuel and required great skill to use because of the difficulty of regulating the temperature. Technologies were a source of tension the employer might buy a modern appliance but might be reluctant to allow the inferior servant to use such a complex device, alternatively the employer might be content to employ servants rather than make the capital investment in a modern bathroom or oven. In such circumstances the servants were not so content. When the Woolfs moved to Monks House in Rodmell, East Sussex at first they had a hole in the garden with a plank over it to serve as a toilet, finding someone to clean this became a serious issue . The Woolfs had their baths (separately) in a tub behind a curtain in the kitchen, when they emerged Hope would give them their breakfast - having servants was a very intimate business it suggested a parent- child relationship but in which the child had all the authority, but this could be resented as overly intimate. Light relates how the woolfs frequently described themselves as having no servants at times in their lives when this translated as having no servants living in their house - they would still have a gardener and a woman to cook and clean - and though she left in the afternoon she would have already prepared them something to eat for the evening.
Even if the masters and mistresses had politics to the left of centre - as the Woolf's were, their attitudes, as Light shows us could be a long way from egalitarian she cites Vera Britten referring to her servants as a 'fifth column', I am inclined to think this as with Virginia's crapping about her servants to her sister Vanessa was a reflection of their feelings of insecurity and dependence upon the people that their cultivated lives depended upon. A wonder and pleasure of this book I felt was Alison Light's tone which came across to me as sympathetic and understanding towards both the servants and those they served. It would be easy and understandable to make fun of the Woolfs and their ilk. Overall the book does confirm my picture of the English nation as being snobbish, prejudiced and insecure, needing always some other group to feel superior over.
Anyway a book that explodes into the British obsessive concern over class, and riots through social history and politics and domestic appliances all through the prism of Virginia Woolf and the servants. A fantastic read.
June 22, 2022
A history of domestic service within the Bloombury group as seen from behind the green baize door. Virginia Woolf is but a thread in a much wider web that includes a history not only of life in service but of specific servants who through the years were passed between members of the Stephen family as well as the Bloomsbury group. Among them are Sophie Farrell, Lottie Hope, and Nellie Boxall, all of whom are usually nothing more than passing references in a letter or diary. The author expores not only their origins but also their place in Victorian/Edwardian society, touching on various related subjects from early social reform to the Labour movement, and casting her net so wide as to include details of the lives Edith Sichel, and Roger Fry, as well as Charles Laughton and Elsa Lancaster, none of whom I'd known very much about. She certainly doesn't spare Mrs. Woolf, and if you already hate V. W. going into this, you'll feel entitled to use this book as a bludgeon to deal the death blow. What a shame. Enthralling, and useful as background reading to V. W.'s diaries (as well as to Downton Abbey).
April 29, 2010
I've been a bit obsessed with Woolf for a coupla years now; what I'd somehow avoided until now was delving into the mountain of Woolf biographies. On the recommendation of a fellow goodreads member, I hurriedly grabbed this as part of my Xmas-presents-to-me-from-me and fortunately had an excuse to 'pleasure read' the book as part of a research project on Woolf I'm currently finishing up.
Incredibly engaging, fresh, and beautifully researched and historicized, Light's 'biography' (of sorts) examines shifting cultural attitudes and practices concerning domestic servitude in England--obviously, this is particular to Woolf's life and to the lives of the Bloomsbury circle. However, by expanding her focus outwards to the lives of a number of the domestics and their histories and the class politics of the Victorian era through the Second World War, Light makes this a compelling read for those who might be less interested in Woolf's life and more interested in that specific historical context. At times, this was difficult to reconcile myself with, because Light certainly does not excuse Woolf's class snobbery or her fraught relationship with her servants--nor does she let the rest of the Bloomsbury crew off the hook--and in fact, this biography has led me to a paper wherein I'll be--gasp--critiquing Woolf's community vision in 'Between the Acts.' But the balanced way in which Light creates this portrait is one of the achievements of the biography. Even as we hear Woolf bitching to Vanessa Bell about her domestic 'dolts,' we are also given to know that Woolf dearly loved old Sophie (a hanger-on from her Victorian childhood), and that she visited Nellie Boxall in the hospital and cuddled up against her, even though by all accounts, her relationship with Nellie was one of love and hate equally.
Fair, well-written, and often like reading a fabulous novel, this one should be read by anyone interested in Woolf, and particularly those interested in Woolf's class politics. It was difficult to put-down; I read it on the subway; I read it in bed and in coffeeshops; I read it, realizing all the while that if I'd been born in the same economic circumstances in Woolf's time, I would have been of the sort she considered morally and intellectually inferior. Nevertheless, one closes the book with a sense of an incredibly complex woman who just so happened to keep equally complex servants--and indeed, it is the servants that shine most brightly in this biography. Nellie, Lottie, Sophie, and Mabel stick in the brain as I write this with a wonderful brightness, a liveliness. Maybe a quote from Mrs. Dalloway should seem inappropriate at this juncture, but I think not unlike Clarissa, these fascinating women somehow come through the biography intact, if probably distorted by representation: "For there she was."
Incredibly engaging, fresh, and beautifully researched and historicized, Light's 'biography' (of sorts) examines shifting cultural attitudes and practices concerning domestic servitude in England--obviously, this is particular to Woolf's life and to the lives of the Bloomsbury circle. However, by expanding her focus outwards to the lives of a number of the domestics and their histories and the class politics of the Victorian era through the Second World War, Light makes this a compelling read for those who might be less interested in Woolf's life and more interested in that specific historical context. At times, this was difficult to reconcile myself with, because Light certainly does not excuse Woolf's class snobbery or her fraught relationship with her servants--nor does she let the rest of the Bloomsbury crew off the hook--and in fact, this biography has led me to a paper wherein I'll be--gasp--critiquing Woolf's community vision in 'Between the Acts.' But the balanced way in which Light creates this portrait is one of the achievements of the biography. Even as we hear Woolf bitching to Vanessa Bell about her domestic 'dolts,' we are also given to know that Woolf dearly loved old Sophie (a hanger-on from her Victorian childhood), and that she visited Nellie Boxall in the hospital and cuddled up against her, even though by all accounts, her relationship with Nellie was one of love and hate equally.
Fair, well-written, and often like reading a fabulous novel, this one should be read by anyone interested in Woolf, and particularly those interested in Woolf's class politics. It was difficult to put-down; I read it on the subway; I read it in bed and in coffeeshops; I read it, realizing all the while that if I'd been born in the same economic circumstances in Woolf's time, I would have been of the sort she considered morally and intellectually inferior. Nevertheless, one closes the book with a sense of an incredibly complex woman who just so happened to keep equally complex servants--and indeed, it is the servants that shine most brightly in this biography. Nellie, Lottie, Sophie, and Mabel stick in the brain as I write this with a wonderful brightness, a liveliness. Maybe a quote from Mrs. Dalloway should seem inappropriate at this juncture, but I think not unlike Clarissa, these fascinating women somehow come through the biography intact, if probably distorted by representation: "For there she was."
July 11, 2012
If a woman is to have a room of one's own, someone has to clean it...usually another woman who has no such room. That's something Virginia Woolf took for granted, but found terribly hard to discuss. This is a very intimate look at the relationship Woolf, Vanessa and the rest of their set had with their servants--about whom we also learn a great deal. The sisters spent pages and pages of their lifelong correspondence discussing Servant Problems, some of which rivaled their already complicated family and romantic relationships. The book is also a really interesting treatment of the transformation of British society between the Victorian, Edwardian and finally between-the-wars eras the Bloomsbury set lived in...for their employees, what it meant to be "in service" changed forever, while the kinds of heavily staffed households Woolf and her contemporaries knew as children became a thing of the past. It also looks at how "mod cons" changed what it meant to keep house, for oneself or for someone else.
If you've always suspected, as I have, that Virginia and Vanessa especially were terrible snobs, and generally kind of selfish and awful to live with, this will further confirm that view. BUT--they were also products of their time.
The author's grandmother was in service, and she weaves that in too, which is a bonus.
If you've always suspected, as I have, that Virginia and Vanessa especially were terrible snobs, and generally kind of selfish and awful to live with, this will further confirm that view. BUT--they were also products of their time.
The author's grandmother was in service, and she weaves that in too, which is a bonus.
January 22, 2021
I have come to the end of this book still not really sure what I think of it. Author, Alison Light, uses Virginia Woolf, her family and the Bloomsbury set, to highlight the relationships between the wealthy and the servant class from the 1880's through to WWII. It is obvious her sympathy is with the servants, but she tends to belabour Woolf's snobbishness, without accepting that both the served, and the servants, were products of their upbringing.
When Virginia was born, she lived in a large house. It was a time when families of her class had many servants and - although most came and went - others stayed. When Virginia and Vanessa moved from the family home to Gordon Square, the author is clear that it was unusual for Edwardian young people to set up home together. Taking a family servant with them, helped make Bloomsbury respectable.
Although I am not denying Virginia's often snobbish, and unkind, behaviour, I can see her point of view - and I say this as someone whose family tree is full of those who worked 'in service,' and were in and out of the workhouse. My ancestors were definitely from behind the green baize door and, as such, it is interesting to hear of their lives, as well as the more famous people they worked for. However, it is also clear that many of the servants who worked for those in Bloomsbury - part of 'the Click,' gained prestige from working in this insular, Bohemian world.
Also, to be totally honest, I can see how hard it must have been for someone like Virginia Woolf - a little over-sensitive perhaps - to find 'the servant problem,' a difficult one. It was obvious, from reading this, that she found the various household trials and tribulations difficult to deal with. Coming from a class that kept emotions bottled up, the scenes with her cook Nellie Boxhall, were obviously embarrassing for her and pulled her away from her writing. She liked to immerse herself in her characters when beginning a novel and to be pulled away to deal with arguments about the coal scuttle probably didn't seem too important to her at the time and she resented having to deal with such mundane issues...
So, what do you learn from this book? Well, a room of your own is something that Virginia obviously felt ambivalent about. She yearned for space and quiet and resented the servants intrusions when she was working; even as their work freed her up to write. Is it any different though from a professional woman hiring a nanny and wanting her kids out of sight while she is in a meeting? It is easy to judge from afar and from a different time. Virginia Stephen grew up in a Victorian household, where servants were a fact of her life and, as class lines blurred, she both longed for help to make her life easier and also resented the fact she felt responsible for servants - ageing, emotional and needy, who made claims upon her. An interesting read, but I ended up feeling sympathy for both sides and just wish the author had not been quite so judgmental.
When Virginia was born, she lived in a large house. It was a time when families of her class had many servants and - although most came and went - others stayed. When Virginia and Vanessa moved from the family home to Gordon Square, the author is clear that it was unusual for Edwardian young people to set up home together. Taking a family servant with them, helped make Bloomsbury respectable.
Although I am not denying Virginia's often snobbish, and unkind, behaviour, I can see her point of view - and I say this as someone whose family tree is full of those who worked 'in service,' and were in and out of the workhouse. My ancestors were definitely from behind the green baize door and, as such, it is interesting to hear of their lives, as well as the more famous people they worked for. However, it is also clear that many of the servants who worked for those in Bloomsbury - part of 'the Click,' gained prestige from working in this insular, Bohemian world.
Also, to be totally honest, I can see how hard it must have been for someone like Virginia Woolf - a little over-sensitive perhaps - to find 'the servant problem,' a difficult one. It was obvious, from reading this, that she found the various household trials and tribulations difficult to deal with. Coming from a class that kept emotions bottled up, the scenes with her cook Nellie Boxhall, were obviously embarrassing for her and pulled her away from her writing. She liked to immerse herself in her characters when beginning a novel and to be pulled away to deal with arguments about the coal scuttle probably didn't seem too important to her at the time and she resented having to deal with such mundane issues...
So, what do you learn from this book? Well, a room of your own is something that Virginia obviously felt ambivalent about. She yearned for space and quiet and resented the servants intrusions when she was working; even as their work freed her up to write. Is it any different though from a professional woman hiring a nanny and wanting her kids out of sight while she is in a meeting? It is easy to judge from afar and from a different time. Virginia Stephen grew up in a Victorian household, where servants were a fact of her life and, as class lines blurred, she both longed for help to make her life easier and also resented the fact she felt responsible for servants - ageing, emotional and needy, who made claims upon her. An interesting read, but I ended up feeling sympathy for both sides and just wish the author had not been quite so judgmental.
April 11, 2014
Okay, so I read my first book by Virginia Woolf, The Waves, and hated it. Thought she was a terrible writer and didn't see why she was so successful and famous.
Then my friend Petra suggested we buddy read this book, a biography of Virginia and the servants in her life. So I readily agreed, thinking maybe this would make me see why she was so revered and famous.
Well I have now finished reading this biography, and I not only think Virginia was a bad writer, she was also a rude, snobbish, self-centered, egotistical person, who only thought of herself and seemed to really care for nobody around her. She certainly didn't respect the servants she employed to work for her. She even looked down on those of her own "class".
A very interesting look at the life of Virginia and the Bloomsbury clan she hung out with. And a very interesting look at the life of the servants who cared for them, cleaned for them, cooked for them, and basically waited on them hand and foot.
Then my friend Petra suggested we buddy read this book, a biography of Virginia and the servants in her life. So I readily agreed, thinking maybe this would make me see why she was so revered and famous.
Well I have now finished reading this biography, and I not only think Virginia was a bad writer, she was also a rude, snobbish, self-centered, egotistical person, who only thought of herself and seemed to really care for nobody around her. She certainly didn't respect the servants she employed to work for her. She even looked down on those of her own "class".
A very interesting look at the life of Virginia and the Bloomsbury clan she hung out with. And a very interesting look at the life of the servants who cared for them, cleaned for them, cooked for them, and basically waited on them hand and foot.
August 21, 2011
We Americans cannot begin to appreciate the extent of the snobbery and class-based cruelty of the English ruling class, especially since we tend to romanticize that same ruling class.
This brilliantly researched book uses Virginia Woolf's diaries as an entry point into documenting the lives of the servants who worked for her and her circle, earning pitifully small wages--a few pounds a month--for work that was degrading, difficult, and endless.
The selfishness of the master class is hard to believe. Servants did not get time off--perhaps half a day every few weeks. They slept in hot (or cold), dark, hellish cubicles infested with bugs. They were begrudged what they ate. They were made fun of, and if they attemtped to better their education, treated with scorn. People like that should know they were too stupid to benefit from education. Their job was to clean out the chamberpots, to boil the water, to sweep the floors, to carry in the fuel, and all the time to stay out of the way, to pretend they weren't there, to give up any pretense that their lives might have meaning. Why? Because they were born into the working class.
The way Woolf and her circle refer to the servants and other women of the working class is appalling. This woman who demanded the complete devotion--all the time and labor of a series of working women was disgusted by them, and when she wrote about them, portrayed them as barely human caricatures. That portrayal reminds me of how bigots in the US described black people a generation ago. Woolf didn't believe that working class people had rich interior lives--or for that matter, any interior life at all. . She had nothing but contempt for very people those of her own class had kept from getting education, from having the vote, from living in decent housing, or even much of the time from having enough to eat.
It's fun for those of us who write historical novels to imagine a light and airy world of witty aristocrats, but this book reminds you that those witty aristocratic lives were built on a system of near-slavery that only drew to an end after WWII.
So yes. This is quite a thought-provoking book. My only quibble with it is that it is much longer than it needs to be, and much of it is repetitious due to the limited nature of the source material. Servants denied much more than a grade school education didn't leave long introspective diaries. Women working 14 hour days of heavy physical energy didn't have the time to write anything at all.
A book that should be read by anyone interested in understanding English culture, society, and most importantly, the hypocrisy of the intellectuals who have been enshrined by their peers, the same upper class snobs who for so long controlled what was considered literature and who was considered to be important.
This brilliantly researched book uses Virginia Woolf's diaries as an entry point into documenting the lives of the servants who worked for her and her circle, earning pitifully small wages--a few pounds a month--for work that was degrading, difficult, and endless.
The selfishness of the master class is hard to believe. Servants did not get time off--perhaps half a day every few weeks. They slept in hot (or cold), dark, hellish cubicles infested with bugs. They were begrudged what they ate. They were made fun of, and if they attemtped to better their education, treated with scorn. People like that should know they were too stupid to benefit from education. Their job was to clean out the chamberpots, to boil the water, to sweep the floors, to carry in the fuel, and all the time to stay out of the way, to pretend they weren't there, to give up any pretense that their lives might have meaning. Why? Because they were born into the working class.
The way Woolf and her circle refer to the servants and other women of the working class is appalling. This woman who demanded the complete devotion--all the time and labor of a series of working women was disgusted by them, and when she wrote about them, portrayed them as barely human caricatures. That portrayal reminds me of how bigots in the US described black people a generation ago. Woolf didn't believe that working class people had rich interior lives--or for that matter, any interior life at all. . She had nothing but contempt for very people those of her own class had kept from getting education, from having the vote, from living in decent housing, or even much of the time from having enough to eat.
It's fun for those of us who write historical novels to imagine a light and airy world of witty aristocrats, but this book reminds you that those witty aristocratic lives were built on a system of near-slavery that only drew to an end after WWII.
So yes. This is quite a thought-provoking book. My only quibble with it is that it is much longer than it needs to be, and much of it is repetitious due to the limited nature of the source material. Servants denied much more than a grade school education didn't leave long introspective diaries. Women working 14 hour days of heavy physical energy didn't have the time to write anything at all.
A book that should be read by anyone interested in understanding English culture, society, and most importantly, the hypocrisy of the intellectuals who have been enshrined by their peers, the same upper class snobs who for so long controlled what was considered literature and who was considered to be important.
January 30, 2021
What domestic support is needed to have a "room of one's own"? I've just been listening to a podcast about several women in Bloomsbury from the Shedunnit series, which examines this question. It is also central to this fascinating book.
Focusing on Virginia Woolf's relationships with the cooks and maids who served her various households over the years, the book gives a feeling of the constant hard work faced by servants in that era. Cooking, cleaning, heavy lifting and the emptying of chamber pots and 'earth closets' at times took a cruel toll.
As well as looking at the physical labour of housework in the early years of the 20th century, Alison Light examines the tensions that inevitably arose within households, with people who weren't family members and didn't necessarily have much in common living so closely together.
There was particular tension between Woolf and her long-time cook Nellie Boxall, who ironically at one time ordered Woolf out of "her room" (which of course in fact belonged to Woolf) during an argument. It appears the two, who were both "highly strung"/subject to mental health problems, had a sort of love-hate relationship, but we only really ever see one side of this, through Woolf's comments in her letters and diaries - which, judging by the quotations Light has chosen, more often dealt with incidents of conflict than with days when nothing went wrong.
In general, I feel the servants' characters remain rather shadowy, which may be unavoidable as we don't have many of their own writings. I slightly wish Light had put the descriptions and mini biographies of each servant into the main text rather than at the back, as it can be confusing to keep track of the individuals, particularly as she sometimes jumps about in terms of time. Light is also of course a strong admirer of Woolf as a writer, and writes about her with sympathy, even when being critical of her, so at times I think her unique character dominates the book a little too much. The one place Nellie really does take centre stage is in the description of her job after she left the Woolfs, as cook for Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is the divide it points out between the Woolfs' theoretical principles and their practical behaviour towards their servants. Leonard was strongly involved in the Labour party, but was reluctant to spend money on refurbishing his tenants' homes or put up servants' wages. And, at the Labour party meetings held at their country home, it appears that the Woolfs took automatic precedence over their tenants and servants.
In a couple of places I felt the author seems to assume there was an unkind motivation without presenting evidence, for instance when the Woolfs delayed in improving the plumbing of their country home. I may have missed something here but would think they probably delayed for financial reasons and not because they were happy about their servants having to clean out earth closets. Of course, though, the work was just as difficult and dispiriting for the servants either way.
However, on the whole I don't think there is any suggestion that the gap between theory and practice was unique to the Woolfs. The book makes it clear that this was something they shared with other middle-class liberals of their era, as they moved from Victorian households with servants behind the green baize door to a more informal way of living and employing domestic help.
P.S. - This is the podcast episode I mentioned at the start - it's about another book I want to read soon, Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade. https://shedunnitshow.com/aroom/
Focusing on Virginia Woolf's relationships with the cooks and maids who served her various households over the years, the book gives a feeling of the constant hard work faced by servants in that era. Cooking, cleaning, heavy lifting and the emptying of chamber pots and 'earth closets' at times took a cruel toll.
As well as looking at the physical labour of housework in the early years of the 20th century, Alison Light examines the tensions that inevitably arose within households, with people who weren't family members and didn't necessarily have much in common living so closely together.
There was particular tension between Woolf and her long-time cook Nellie Boxall, who ironically at one time ordered Woolf out of "her room" (which of course in fact belonged to Woolf) during an argument. It appears the two, who were both "highly strung"/subject to mental health problems, had a sort of love-hate relationship, but we only really ever see one side of this, through Woolf's comments in her letters and diaries - which, judging by the quotations Light has chosen, more often dealt with incidents of conflict than with days when nothing went wrong.
In general, I feel the servants' characters remain rather shadowy, which may be unavoidable as we don't have many of their own writings. I slightly wish Light had put the descriptions and mini biographies of each servant into the main text rather than at the back, as it can be confusing to keep track of the individuals, particularly as she sometimes jumps about in terms of time. Light is also of course a strong admirer of Woolf as a writer, and writes about her with sympathy, even when being critical of her, so at times I think her unique character dominates the book a little too much. The one place Nellie really does take centre stage is in the description of her job after she left the Woolfs, as cook for Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is the divide it points out between the Woolfs' theoretical principles and their practical behaviour towards their servants. Leonard was strongly involved in the Labour party, but was reluctant to spend money on refurbishing his tenants' homes or put up servants' wages. And, at the Labour party meetings held at their country home, it appears that the Woolfs took automatic precedence over their tenants and servants.
In a couple of places I felt the author seems to assume there was an unkind motivation without presenting evidence, for instance when the Woolfs delayed in improving the plumbing of their country home. I may have missed something here but would think they probably delayed for financial reasons and not because they were happy about their servants having to clean out earth closets. Of course, though, the work was just as difficult and dispiriting for the servants either way.
However, on the whole I don't think there is any suggestion that the gap between theory and practice was unique to the Woolfs. The book makes it clear that this was something they shared with other middle-class liberals of their era, as they moved from Victorian households with servants behind the green baize door to a more informal way of living and employing domestic help.
P.S. - This is the podcast episode I mentioned at the start - it's about another book I want to read soon, Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade. https://shedunnitshow.com/aroom/
July 31, 2010
This is a fascinating glimpse of a facet of British society. Looking through the lens of the servant class and service Alison Light makes life in the Bloomsbury group and Virginia and Leonard Woolf her subject. In telling all this, she has to pretty much explain British prewar society and give us a history of British domestic service. She tells it well, I think. The book is a chronology of Woolf's life and an account of her uncomfortable relationship with those who worked for her. More, the book also presents a biography--or the story--however sketchy, of each servant who worked for her. And in those stories and in the chapters dedicated to explanations of the service is a history of British domestic help. Light has written an important addition to Virginia Woolf studies. Because her book, in describing Woolf's relation to domestic help, thoroughly details the social system that produced the servant class, the need for them, the importance of individuals having service to go into, the evolution of dependence on them, and the relation of all these facts to each other, it also covers much of modern British social history. Virginia Woolf is a Bloomsbury star, of course, and her clumsiness and unease with domestics well known, but other Bloomsbury domestic styles and arrangements are also described by Light. The household of Roger Fry has its own chapter. Vanessa Bell, Virginia's sister, was apparently more traditionally-minded about servants. And Light also tells the interesting saga of Nellie Boxall, fired by Virginia, who later worked for years for Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester. An absorbing read. One worry, a minor one. I like to read similar books simultaneously, thinking I can get more focus on a subject that way. I read this at the same time I read Glendinning's biography of Leonard Woolf and was surprised at how closely some of her impressions and ways of telling of a particular event matched up with the earlier work. But I tell myself we know so much about these people it's hard to find fresh soil that'll yield new fruit. It's enough that Light was able to come at Virginia Woolf from this angle, approaching her from the kitchen.
October 16, 2010
Alison Light said that the topic of Virginia Woolf has been thoroughly covered, except for her interaction with the women who served her as nanny or cook from her infancy until her death. This is a fascinating account of women in service, in general, from the latter part of the 19th century through the WW I and WW II years in Britain. Light describes the days' long work, the desire to lift oneself from poverty, the low pay and the shift caused by World War I when fewer and fewer girls became servants. She also stresses the interdependence of the upper classes, the helplessness without the aid of live-in cooks and housekeepers, and the tempestuous relationship that VW had with Nellie, VW longing for independence for herself and other women, yet relying on care from Sophie, Nellie and Lottie. A new view of Virginia Woolf's life and insights, as well, into Leonard Woolf's championing of the common man, while not really thinking of him as an equal.
August 3, 2013
Enjoyed this one a lot. Luckily, it didn't make me dislike Virginia Woolf (and I was afraid it would) - because she tried to behave decently towards people who irritated her and whom she didn't understand - but it came very, very near. It's hard to believe there were (and are) people who refuse to acknowledge that as human beings, others have the same basic value as themselves - people who can look at other people and not really notice them - and become artists. There is something wrong with that.
But in short, I loved it because GOSSIP and I love gossip. Also, historical details about everyday life of, you know, common people, not tedious lords & ladies.
But in short, I loved it because GOSSIP and I love gossip. Also, historical details about everyday life of, you know, common people, not tedious lords & ladies.
June 13, 2017
I loved this book. Less potted biography, more a social history of domestic service and women's working lives from the end of the Victorian era to the mid 20th century.
Light has done a brilliant job of tracking down the various women who worked for the Woolfs through the years. They are scattered throughout Virginia's diaries and occasionally pop up in biographies, often only as a footnote and sometimes only mentioned by first name or diminutive ("Flossie", "Nellie", "Lottie"). From these scraps, Light builds up sympathetic portraits of the people who lived in such intimacy with their employers and yet who were always at a remove, always seen with suspicion or revulsion.
The book is both fascinating and engaging. The sheer scale of Light's research is awe inspiring, but the book never feels heavy. She is a good writer - accessible, sharp, insightful, and profoundly sympathetic to her subjects.
Light has done a brilliant job of tracking down the various women who worked for the Woolfs through the years. They are scattered throughout Virginia's diaries and occasionally pop up in biographies, often only as a footnote and sometimes only mentioned by first name or diminutive ("Flossie", "Nellie", "Lottie"). From these scraps, Light builds up sympathetic portraits of the people who lived in such intimacy with their employers and yet who were always at a remove, always seen with suspicion or revulsion.
The book is both fascinating and engaging. The sheer scale of Light's research is awe inspiring, but the book never feels heavy. She is a good writer - accessible, sharp, insightful, and profoundly sympathetic to her subjects.
February 5, 2013
This is is a very complex treatment of Virginia Woolf's antipathy to servants due to her rather snobbish upbringing and her abhorrence of her body due to the sexual repression of the day and her own sexual assault by her half brothers. She hated being dependant on servants who represented to her the physical side of life, also she and her husband were quite tight with the penny. Also, much as she chided the servants and made fun of their mindlessness, she was very disappointed when they weren't slavishly loyal to her.
December 27, 2022
Have had this on my shelf of weeded, ex-library books for years. My friend Nell reminded me of it as we both begin to prepare for a one-on-one book discussion of Mrs. Dalloway in the next few weeks. It was a very interesting read and moved pretty fast in spite of having lots of details about the Stephens/Woolf/Bell families as well as detailed vignettes about the servants in those houses.
Virginia Woolf was definitely a product of her time, and her "time" just happened to cover the end of the Victorian era through two world wars. That time period saw an absolute sea change in society and its expectations as well as in domestic technology and practices. The book does a good job of explaining how VW was of a certain social class and how that class's dependence on domestic workers was part of the social fabric of the time. Alison Light, who was married to a Marxist, does an admirable job of explaining the history of domestic service during the changing times of VW's life. I found particularly interesting Light's information on "foundling" homes and organizations from which many of the domestic hires came from. It seemed there was a fine line between charitable caring for unwanted or abandoned children and outright abduction of some of those children in order to fill domestic service slots.
I think many Americans tend to look at much of Victorian and Edwardian times in England with a kind of rosy Downton Abbey look, and we don't always see the darker aspects of life that Light shows in her history. How many of us don't even remember washing machines with rollers on them to wring the water out or having to hang the clothes outside to dry in the freezing cold? My grandmother's house never had a hot water heater in it, and this was the mid-1950's. We had to boil water on the stove to wash up and wash the dishes. What Light does is really show how hard life was for all levels of society in the time she discusses.
VW expressed things in her writing in creative ways that had not been done before, and she has now become a cult figure almost. Seeing comments in her letters and diaries that show she was just as petty and insensitive to those around her, especially those she depended upon for help in order to write, reveals her snobbishness and prejudices and may be disappointing to some. But she was, again, a product of her time and her social class. It is not always likable in her, but the art she created has to stand separately, I think.
The book is worth reading for the history of domestic life during this time whether or not you know Virginia Woolf's writing, but Alison Light does an excellent job of putting VW's life and writing in context with the daily domestic life issues that she had to face. Does it show the feet of clay of Virginia? I guess that will have to be decided by the readers of this book.
Virginia Woolf was definitely a product of her time, and her "time" just happened to cover the end of the Victorian era through two world wars. That time period saw an absolute sea change in society and its expectations as well as in domestic technology and practices. The book does a good job of explaining how VW was of a certain social class and how that class's dependence on domestic workers was part of the social fabric of the time. Alison Light, who was married to a Marxist, does an admirable job of explaining the history of domestic service during the changing times of VW's life. I found particularly interesting Light's information on "foundling" homes and organizations from which many of the domestic hires came from. It seemed there was a fine line between charitable caring for unwanted or abandoned children and outright abduction of some of those children in order to fill domestic service slots.
I think many Americans tend to look at much of Victorian and Edwardian times in England with a kind of rosy Downton Abbey look, and we don't always see the darker aspects of life that Light shows in her history. How many of us don't even remember washing machines with rollers on them to wring the water out or having to hang the clothes outside to dry in the freezing cold? My grandmother's house never had a hot water heater in it, and this was the mid-1950's. We had to boil water on the stove to wash up and wash the dishes. What Light does is really show how hard life was for all levels of society in the time she discusses.
VW expressed things in her writing in creative ways that had not been done before, and she has now become a cult figure almost. Seeing comments in her letters and diaries that show she was just as petty and insensitive to those around her, especially those she depended upon for help in order to write, reveals her snobbishness and prejudices and may be disappointing to some. But she was, again, a product of her time and her social class. It is not always likable in her, but the art she created has to stand separately, I think.
The book is worth reading for the history of domestic life during this time whether or not you know Virginia Woolf's writing, but Alison Light does an excellent job of putting VW's life and writing in context with the daily domestic life issues that she had to face. Does it show the feet of clay of Virginia? I guess that will have to be decided by the readers of this book.
October 26, 2015
This is an exceptional example of history "from the bottom." Despite the difficulty of learning about Virginia Woolf's particular servants, she uncovers enough to bring them into the spotlight as individual personalities. In the process she illuminates the role of domestic service during Woolf's life, how a third of women worked as maids, cooks, and such. She probed archives to locate the origins and identities of women mentioned by a false name or a first name.
For Virginia and her sister Vanessa Bell, who hired some of the same women, servants were both necessary for their creative life and at the same time viewed as obstructive. Raised to expect personal service, each continued to depend upon women to manage their daily lives in adulthood. Vanessa's personality led to her being more of a manager, setting daily orders and letting go. Virginia and one cook had a very long troubled relationship, full of fire and apology from each side.
Light also probes the way Woolf excises the individuality of servants from her fiction. One might be the model for a character, but would lose detail as a draft went through editing. Woolf also seemed more scarred by her mother's death and transferred some emotional needs onto servants. She had more difficulty negotiating the employer relationship. Being more fragile, she also needed their assistance during periods of illness. One comes away with a better understanding of how bigotry also supplemented her liberal leanings. She was of her age, and shaped by it.
I appreciated this new slant, the placement of Woolf and Bell within the English class system. Despite her feminist leanings, Woolf could never fully set her workers within that framework. This is required reading for any Bloomsbury fan, as well as those interested in British social history.
For Virginia and her sister Vanessa Bell, who hired some of the same women, servants were both necessary for their creative life and at the same time viewed as obstructive. Raised to expect personal service, each continued to depend upon women to manage their daily lives in adulthood. Vanessa's personality led to her being more of a manager, setting daily orders and letting go. Virginia and one cook had a very long troubled relationship, full of fire and apology from each side.
Light also probes the way Woolf excises the individuality of servants from her fiction. One might be the model for a character, but would lose detail as a draft went through editing. Woolf also seemed more scarred by her mother's death and transferred some emotional needs onto servants. She had more difficulty negotiating the employer relationship. Being more fragile, she also needed their assistance during periods of illness. One comes away with a better understanding of how bigotry also supplemented her liberal leanings. She was of her age, and shaped by it.
I appreciated this new slant, the placement of Woolf and Bell within the English class system. Despite her feminist leanings, Woolf could never fully set her workers within that framework. This is required reading for any Bloomsbury fan, as well as those interested in British social history.
June 4, 2013
I have not studied a lot about Virginia Woolf and only knew her through reputation. This book surprised me at how thought provoking it is. Halfway through I had thought to give it three stars because I felt that the author wandered too much in Virginia's thoughts, but by the end, I felt I had been transported to rather foreign territory.
I had been raised with the oral history going back to my great grandparents who were close in age to Virginia Woolf, if maybe a little younger. My ancestors were tough and independent settlers of the American West. They had no expectations of anyone to do their work for them. Virginia would have probably thought they were even more savage than her servants. Yet my great grandmother was one of the first graduates of Snow College in Southern Utah. Then she went on the make her own soap and do her own laundry in a huge tub in her yard. I would love to do more research on the servant culture in upper class America at this same time, perhaps in more urban areas.
The more I read about the lives of great authors, the more I have to wonder if someone has to be a little unbalanced to be a great author. I don't envy the life described here, except that she could afford to pay someone else to do the housekeeping while she was writing. In her diaries, Virginia admits that she couldn't do it if she had to take care if every little thing. Of course I have servants like a microwave and dishwasher, and easy typing on the computer. But it's a fun daydream: I'm sure I'd be a great author, too, if only I had someone to take care of the house...
I had been raised with the oral history going back to my great grandparents who were close in age to Virginia Woolf, if maybe a little younger. My ancestors were tough and independent settlers of the American West. They had no expectations of anyone to do their work for them. Virginia would have probably thought they were even more savage than her servants. Yet my great grandmother was one of the first graduates of Snow College in Southern Utah. Then she went on the make her own soap and do her own laundry in a huge tub in her yard. I would love to do more research on the servant culture in upper class America at this same time, perhaps in more urban areas.
The more I read about the lives of great authors, the more I have to wonder if someone has to be a little unbalanced to be a great author. I don't envy the life described here, except that she could afford to pay someone else to do the housekeeping while she was writing. In her diaries, Virginia admits that she couldn't do it if she had to take care if every little thing. Of course I have servants like a microwave and dishwasher, and easy typing on the computer. But it's a fun daydream: I'm sure I'd be a great author, too, if only I had someone to take care of the house...
February 6, 2021
Excellent history of service employees in England from 1860-1945 and of Virginia Wolff's dependence on and difficult relationships with her "help". Good use of her journals and other writings to elucidate these issues. Well written too!
I also enjoyed the details on how an upper middle class household was arranged and managed, from meals to heating to sleeping arrangements, chamber pots and slop rooms!
I also enjoyed the details on how an upper middle class household was arranged and managed, from meals to heating to sleeping arrangements, chamber pots and slop rooms!
August 19, 2018
I choose to read this book after being so impressed with Alison Light’s book exploring the working lives of her ancestors in Common People that I read earlier this year.
Now obviously as I’m a reader and I know the basic details about the life of Virginia Woolf, but as I was to discover, that is a world away from looking at her life in her home settings, in relation to the servants that lived with and worked for this very literary woman. This book is an intimate portrayal of a woman at home, as part of a family but most pertinently in her relations with her servants which let’s just say were more complex than the popular portrayal that we are used to.
The first servant to appear in Virginia’s life was Sophie Farrell who was a servant to Julia Stephen, Virginia’s mother. We learn about how Sophie, in common with so many girls of her background left her home to work away ‘in service’ From this starting point we chart the history of women who lived their lives serving others up to the time of WWII. Alison Light also points out the type of ‘live out’ servants that are now part of modern lives. But let’s go back to towards the end of the Victorian period where Sophie Farell is working as one of servants in South Kensington. Following the deaths of so many people who were important to her the siblings set up home in Bloomsbury to live a more bohemian lifestyle and it was here that the Bloomsbury Group was formed. However the siblings relied on servants at this time, and as the book tells us Virginia and her sister did for the rest of her lives.
So where did Alison Light get all this information on the servants from? Well the starting point is the letters between the two sisters and her own diaries where unfiltered views of the women who gave her the space to have a room of her own were indelibly marked upon page after page.
I’m going to be honest, I found the Virginia Woolf in her own words, quite a hypocritical and snobbish woman. I was constantly reminding myself that this was a different time where expectations of life were set in stone, but it didn’t stop my overwhelming sympathy for the women who served and my feeling of contempt for the author.
Although Alison Light freely admits that many of the servants could not be traced, in these instances, because they weren’t even afforded a name, she has done some exceptional work in tracing some of the others. We are given a surprising amount of detail about a few most memorably of Nellie Boxhall who was eventually dismissed from the Woolf household. And for me it is the time after they left the Woolf household that are so sad. There were no pensions; if the servants weren’t kept on as family retainers then they could end up with no security whatsoever, in some cases after devoting half a century in serving. This is just one shocking aspect, the other being the way the members of the Bloomsbury set, well into the war period seemed to pass their servants backwards and forwards between the households as if these people were no more than useful objects.
Pretty most of the women on my maternal side up until those born in the 20th Century worked in service. I’d always wondered how the young girls of 12, 13 & 14 ended up living and working so far from where they’d been born and the stories of the servants researched by Alison Light included the hiring fairs and the preference for rural maids that were thought to be more malleable than their town and city cousins.
There are simply so many fascinating facts that it is impossible to put within a short review but if you are interested in the author or the lives of servants during this time period, you could do far worse than to read Mrs Woolf and the Servants.
Now obviously as I’m a reader and I know the basic details about the life of Virginia Woolf, but as I was to discover, that is a world away from looking at her life in her home settings, in relation to the servants that lived with and worked for this very literary woman. This book is an intimate portrayal of a woman at home, as part of a family but most pertinently in her relations with her servants which let’s just say were more complex than the popular portrayal that we are used to.
The first servant to appear in Virginia’s life was Sophie Farrell who was a servant to Julia Stephen, Virginia’s mother. We learn about how Sophie, in common with so many girls of her background left her home to work away ‘in service’ From this starting point we chart the history of women who lived their lives serving others up to the time of WWII. Alison Light also points out the type of ‘live out’ servants that are now part of modern lives. But let’s go back to towards the end of the Victorian period where Sophie Farell is working as one of servants in South Kensington. Following the deaths of so many people who were important to her the siblings set up home in Bloomsbury to live a more bohemian lifestyle and it was here that the Bloomsbury Group was formed. However the siblings relied on servants at this time, and as the book tells us Virginia and her sister did for the rest of her lives.
So where did Alison Light get all this information on the servants from? Well the starting point is the letters between the two sisters and her own diaries where unfiltered views of the women who gave her the space to have a room of her own were indelibly marked upon page after page.
I’m going to be honest, I found the Virginia Woolf in her own words, quite a hypocritical and snobbish woman. I was constantly reminding myself that this was a different time where expectations of life were set in stone, but it didn’t stop my overwhelming sympathy for the women who served and my feeling of contempt for the author.
Although Alison Light freely admits that many of the servants could not be traced, in these instances, because they weren’t even afforded a name, she has done some exceptional work in tracing some of the others. We are given a surprising amount of detail about a few most memorably of Nellie Boxhall who was eventually dismissed from the Woolf household. And for me it is the time after they left the Woolf household that are so sad. There were no pensions; if the servants weren’t kept on as family retainers then they could end up with no security whatsoever, in some cases after devoting half a century in serving. This is just one shocking aspect, the other being the way the members of the Bloomsbury set, well into the war period seemed to pass their servants backwards and forwards between the households as if these people were no more than useful objects.
Pretty most of the women on my maternal side up until those born in the 20th Century worked in service. I’d always wondered how the young girls of 12, 13 & 14 ended up living and working so far from where they’d been born and the stories of the servants researched by Alison Light included the hiring fairs and the preference for rural maids that were thought to be more malleable than their town and city cousins.
There are simply so many fascinating facts that it is impossible to put within a short review but if you are interested in the author or the lives of servants during this time period, you could do far worse than to read Mrs Woolf and the Servants.
January 14, 2009
Between Virginia Woolf’s parents’ generation and her own, the institution of resident servants for the upper middle classes largely disappeared. Using the Bloomsbury Group as examples, the author shows how changing lifestyles, household conveniences, the women’s suffrage and labor movements, the rising age for compulsory education, and the two World Wars contributed to its demise.
The transition was rocky for Woolf and her circle, though. They had fewer servants in smaller households than their parents, so conflicts (of class and personality) were always present. Servants were not seen as equals, yet like family they were always around to see the most intimate parts of one’s life. Also, in the days before social safety nets, employers bore some responsibility to provide for their retainers in their old age or illness, despite their own changing circumstances. While they spared her the heavy and dirty work necessary before central heating, refrigeration, and indoor plumbing, dealing with servants took a great deal of Virginia Woolf’s time and emotional energy.
For those who are interested in what went on behind the scenes in novels set before the World Wars, I also recommend Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England, by Judith Flanders.
The transition was rocky for Woolf and her circle, though. They had fewer servants in smaller households than their parents, so conflicts (of class and personality) were always present. Servants were not seen as equals, yet like family they were always around to see the most intimate parts of one’s life. Also, in the days before social safety nets, employers bore some responsibility to provide for their retainers in their old age or illness, despite their own changing circumstances. While they spared her the heavy and dirty work necessary before central heating, refrigeration, and indoor plumbing, dealing with servants took a great deal of Virginia Woolf’s time and emotional energy.
For those who are interested in what went on behind the scenes in novels set before the World Wars, I also recommend Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England, by Judith Flanders.
October 23, 2018
Light’s iconoclastic book is a combination of histories: biography of Woolf and her Bloomsbury cohorts and her servants, sociological study of domestic service 1880-1940, but mostly a study of the English class system.
Woolf was psychologically troubled throughout her life, exacerbated by sexual abuse by her step-brother. While she is justly known in literary circles for her exploration of women’s lives, this book makes it totally clear that her concerns were solely focused on women of a certain class and intellectual ambition. Whenever she discussed her servants and others of the lower class she called them vermin and emphasized their dirtiness and smelliness.
Woolf and her class were much like the Trumpists of today. “Contamination fears permeate Woolf’s diary, her most defensive, paranoid feelings often roused when others were no longer safely exotic or able to be individualized as victims -- like Virginia’s rant against the shoppers off Oxford Street, ‘deformed & stunted & vicious & sweating & ugly hooligans & harridans’. “This was class consciousness boiled down to gut reactions. At such times hatred became a violent shield against the feelings of invasion by the group or ‘the herd.’”
Woolf was psychologically troubled throughout her life, exacerbated by sexual abuse by her step-brother. While she is justly known in literary circles for her exploration of women’s lives, this book makes it totally clear that her concerns were solely focused on women of a certain class and intellectual ambition. Whenever she discussed her servants and others of the lower class she called them vermin and emphasized their dirtiness and smelliness.
Woolf and her class were much like the Trumpists of today. “Contamination fears permeate Woolf’s diary, her most defensive, paranoid feelings often roused when others were no longer safely exotic or able to be individualized as victims -- like Virginia’s rant against the shoppers off Oxford Street, ‘deformed & stunted & vicious & sweating & ugly hooligans & harridans’. “This was class consciousness boiled down to gut reactions. At such times hatred became a violent shield against the feelings of invasion by the group or ‘the herd.’”
September 1, 2011
My fascination with all things British continues to dominate my reading and this was an especially interesting book not only because it was a biography of sorts (Virginia Woolf being a apt subject) but also because of the behind the scenes glimpse into the lives of the people who made life so cushy for the upper classes. The author dug around in lots of diaries and documents to reveal a dismal glimpse into what life was like during a time (roughly from the mid 19th century up until WWII) when hundreds of women had no other alternative than to go into service. While the book intrigued me, I came away with a distinct dislike for Virginia Woolf and her group of Bloomsberry friends. True, they were a talented and creative bunch, but this book also made it clear that they were incredibly snobbish and focused on themselves. True, Virginia herself seemed to have periodic qualms of conscience about the way she treated her various servants, but by and large she was no different than the others in her social circle – those who were helpless when there was no one to wait on them, but who looked down on and often ridiculed their maids, cooks and housekeepers as being hopelessly inferior.
September 20, 2014
As Alison Light's book reminds us, the Bloomsbury life wasn't all fun and games and high-minded modernism. For all her free-thinking ways, Virginia Woolf, like the rest of the upper-middle class in early 20th-century England, depended upon a team of servants to keep her and her household afloat. Light takes a look into the oft-neglected and stereotyped lives of the servants, creating a parallel portrait of their famous mistress, the often snooty and unsympathetic Woolf. The book is essentially a very readable and clear master's thesis in English literature, but the hypothesis and arguments are sound. My attention certainly wavered, because I think I've even fallen out of practice of reading Woolf scholarship, but it was not for any fault on Light's part. Admittedly, I'm far more interested in the complex, pretentious Woolf than in her humble servants, but it was an eye-opening portrait, just the same.
January 12, 2018
I listened to this on Audible. An interesting look at Virginia Woolf's, and other members of the Bloomsbury set's, relationships with the domestic in their household. At times I found it hard to follow because it does not take a strictly chronological approach, especially the portions where the author discusses Woolf's treatment of servants in her fiction. The author also throws a lot of names at you, so it helps to have a basic understanding of the Bloomsbury set and their tangled relationships.
One weakness of the book, which the author freely admits, is that very little survives from the perspective of the domestics. The author is forced to rely primarily on Woolf's diary and correspondence, which is nonetheless fascinating. This book is a nice corrective to romanticized claptrap (but enjoyable claptrap) such as Downton Abbey.
One weakness of the book, which the author freely admits, is that very little survives from the perspective of the domestics. The author is forced to rely primarily on Woolf's diary and correspondence, which is nonetheless fascinating. This book is a nice corrective to romanticized claptrap (but enjoyable claptrap) such as Downton Abbey.
November 11, 2015
Alison Light is a little "light" in capturing the spirit of Mrs. Woolf -- and her servants. A bit too rambling, to not much purpose. I was hoping for something with more substance, but instead found a hodge-podge of historical nonsense, sometimes on Virginia, sometimes on her servants. The book would have benefited immensely from a more ordered approach. Meh. This is one of the "waste of good time" books, that I end up resenting ever having picked up.
December 26, 2008
I'm surprised at how engaging I found this book. It zooms across the scale from very intimate to broad movements of history, and always with clarity and compassion. I was frankly shocked at the centrality of service in British life, though maybe I shouldn't have been.
July 27, 2020
I had heard wonderful things about this work of nonfiction and I was not disappointed. Light provides a careful and balanced review of the British class system through the lives of live-in servants who work for Virginia Woolf. There is abundant material about Woolf's life—letters, documents, diaries—mostly provided by Virginia Woolf herself. Despite that, and despite her well-documented clashes with her servants, these women have been largely ignored and sometimes erased. (During their 'servant less years' they still had servants.)
Woolf hated being dependent, but was consistently needy, only learning to cook late in life and never learning to clean at all. She came from the super middle classes and even now such people do what Woolf did—they complain about what they cannot afford and never do for themselves. Everything is done for them and even help the servant who complained!
The women who served (and they were largely omen) came from poor backgrounds, usually worked in the basement and lived in tiny attic rooms. They were badly paid, but expected to show absolute subservience and gratitude and simple affection toward Woolf. Every misdeed, perceived fault or character flaw was blamed on their class. I learned a great deal about Woolf's life and the lives of others of her set (her "click"), and about the sources of her insecurities and conflicts with servants. Still, these insights didn't make me like her better.
Light interviewed family members and neighbors, reviewed documents and recordings in order to reveal the lives of those below stairs: Nellie Boxall (whom Woolf routinely referred to as "Nelly" in her diary), Lottie Hope, Sophia Farrell, Grace Higgens, and others worked for the Woolf's and other members of the Bloomsbury set. Often they were grateful and affectionate, staying on for fifteen or twenty years.
The Bloomsbury crowd were considered to be generally better folk to work for. Uniforms and the particularly irksome caps were not required, they were allowed to have family visit, and in some households they were invited to entertainments (not at the Woolf homes). They cooked over wood stoves; carried water from outdoors or a neighbor; heated water in the basement to be used in baths on upper floors; cleaned chamber pots daily, and also emptied and cleaned out the privy in the garden. They were sometimes for decades without a raise in pay, lobbied for a full day off once a month (and maybe didn't get that), and put in long days from before their employers rose from bed in the morning until after they retired. Woolf did a cost analysis and decided it was easier (for her) not to put in indoor plumbing. Most British homes did not have indoor plumbing in the teens and twenties and into the thirties of the last century, but most British people were not rich enough to afford multiple homes.
It was a miserable and increasingly disrespected existence. Percy Bartholomew maintained Leonard Woolf's garden for decades and was even mentioned in Leonard's memoirs, but resented that he was spoken of slightingly and without his last name. This was typical. Most employed women during these years were servants. It was one of few occupations open to them at a time when education was expensive. Working class women only began to move into other jobs as a result of labor shortages during the two world wars in the twentieth century. If they became angry over their treatment, or demanding of respect, or even broke down, Woolf ascribed these weaknesses as evidence of lower character. Despite her own mental breakdowns, her own tantrums and attention-seeking behavior, she never acknowledged the parallel in her servants. While she could be kind in desperate times such as a cancer or other illness, she found demands on herself to be completely unreasonable.
All things considered, the servants come across as better people than the "masters." (Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester were exceptions, and treated the women who worked for them with great consideration.
Woolf hated being dependent, but was consistently needy, only learning to cook late in life and never learning to clean at all. She came from the super middle classes and even now such people do what Woolf did—they complain about what they cannot afford and never do for themselves. Everything is done for them and even help the servant who complained!
The women who served (and they were largely omen) came from poor backgrounds, usually worked in the basement and lived in tiny attic rooms. They were badly paid, but expected to show absolute subservience and gratitude and simple affection toward Woolf. Every misdeed, perceived fault or character flaw was blamed on their class. I learned a great deal about Woolf's life and the lives of others of her set (her "click"), and about the sources of her insecurities and conflicts with servants. Still, these insights didn't make me like her better.
Light interviewed family members and neighbors, reviewed documents and recordings in order to reveal the lives of those below stairs: Nellie Boxall (whom Woolf routinely referred to as "Nelly" in her diary), Lottie Hope, Sophia Farrell, Grace Higgens, and others worked for the Woolf's and other members of the Bloomsbury set. Often they were grateful and affectionate, staying on for fifteen or twenty years.
The Bloomsbury crowd were considered to be generally better folk to work for. Uniforms and the particularly irksome caps were not required, they were allowed to have family visit, and in some households they were invited to entertainments (not at the Woolf homes). They cooked over wood stoves; carried water from outdoors or a neighbor; heated water in the basement to be used in baths on upper floors; cleaned chamber pots daily, and also emptied and cleaned out the privy in the garden. They were sometimes for decades without a raise in pay, lobbied for a full day off once a month (and maybe didn't get that), and put in long days from before their employers rose from bed in the morning until after they retired. Woolf did a cost analysis and decided it was easier (for her) not to put in indoor plumbing. Most British homes did not have indoor plumbing in the teens and twenties and into the thirties of the last century, but most British people were not rich enough to afford multiple homes.
It was a miserable and increasingly disrespected existence. Percy Bartholomew maintained Leonard Woolf's garden for decades and was even mentioned in Leonard's memoirs, but resented that he was spoken of slightingly and without his last name. This was typical. Most employed women during these years were servants. It was one of few occupations open to them at a time when education was expensive. Working class women only began to move into other jobs as a result of labor shortages during the two world wars in the twentieth century. If they became angry over their treatment, or demanding of respect, or even broke down, Woolf ascribed these weaknesses as evidence of lower character. Despite her own mental breakdowns, her own tantrums and attention-seeking behavior, she never acknowledged the parallel in her servants. While she could be kind in desperate times such as a cancer or other illness, she found demands on herself to be completely unreasonable.
All things considered, the servants come across as better people than the "masters." (Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester were exceptions, and treated the women who worked for them with great consideration.
April 28, 2021
A dense and richly documented account of the lives of the servants who worked for Virginia Woolf. It offers a view of the harsh reality of domestic service at the beginning of the 20th century, but also highlights the contradictory position of the feminist writer, keen to publicly praise women's liberation whilst preserving power relations and, arguably, exploitation in her own home.
February 12, 2022
Lettura affascinante. Non solo perché mette in luce il rapporto complicato tra Woolf e il personale di servizio, ma anche per il focus che fa su un mondo che appare ormai preistorico ma che faceva parte della vita dei nostri nonni.
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