FEUDALISM AND DOMESTIC SERVICE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5690, 8 October 1896, Page 3

FEUDALISM AND DOMESTIC SERVICE.

— * In a recent issue of the London Chronicle, a lady contributor, in propounding a plan for solving the "servant girl question/ gave an interesting sketch of the development of domestic service as it now exists. Mrs Norman, the author of the paper, maintains that the cause of tilings being out of joint between mistresses and servants is that " feudalism is oiit of date." The present system of housekeeping . is, she says, based upon the usages of feudal times. These accord very ill indeed with the modern liberty of the subject, the improved- penal system, and the franchise. The domestic problem cannot be said to have existed in feudal times. Then was the hey-day of housekeeiring. You asked for nothing ; you commanded and ordered : just as your lord with his band of followers, so you with your women-folk. "Fetch yonder pasty from the buttery, wench, and see thou come sharply about thy task." That was the style of three or four hundred years ago. To-day it is: " Bring up the pie, Jane, from the larder ; quickly, please." "Oh, I didn't know you wanted that agin, mm; we 'ad it in the kitchen for our suppers'm." Here you get the decay of feudalism. As freedom destroyed the feudal system, so it has destroyed the railings which kept servants and mistresses separated, and servants have got freedom — in an aggravated degree. Mrs Norman assures her sisters that they must more and more share the serf's work themselves — or do without it — for the coming servant girl will be more and more disinclined to be a serf. "We — we middle-class women — must set our house in order, in readiness for this change. Don't let us be of those who want to keep anyone down, or back, or in their place, for our own selfish ends. This sort of tiling must go." Her theory is that " one must ask no service of anyone which one would not deign to offer to anyone, or to one's self," and a practical consequence from the acceptance of this theory, is the determination to reduce the "serf's work" to- the, lowest possible limits. This sounds very much like the "co-operative housekeeping" conclusion, which the advocates of "unitary homes" in our midst have reached. If the coming generation is going to refuse domestic service, there is nothing else for it ; for it would be deplorable beyond measure to contemplate every woman in the country reduced to the position of the hard-worked nurse, cook and general servant, which is the lot of the average mistress of a home where "lady-helps" are not employed.