Literary handmaids: Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria, or, The wrongs of woman (1798) and Catherine Crowe's Susan Hopley, or, The adventures of a maid servant (1841) -- Oral pleasures: repression and desire in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847) and Elizabeth Gaskell's The old nurse's story (1862) -- Obedient servants of empire: narrating imperial history in William Wilkie Collins' The moonstone (1868) -- "Master's made away with": servant voices and narrational politics in R.L. Stevenson's The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) -- The ventriloquized servant -- In their own voice: servants and autobiography
Summary
Utilizing an array of cultural texts, fiction, servant autobiography, diaries and pamphlets, this study examines the debate on mass literacy as it developed around the figure of the Victorian servant, as well as its significance for understanding the nexus between class and narrative power in nineteenth-century literature
