MASTERS  & SERVANTS

-Still separate worlds?-

By Amandine Debus

The TV show Downton Abbey is once again nominated for many awards this year : the Screen Actors Guild Awards, The Golden Globes,… 2014 is going to be a busy year for the actors of the show, which shows servants' everyday life at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their living conditions are not all beer and skittles! Has it really changed today?

In order to help us to  understand better the main differences between servants today and a century ago, here are some rules taken from a website dealing with the history of Hinchingbrooke House and most probably from the beginning of the 20^th century:

Servants from downtown abbey

RULE NB 1: Servants have to be silent and just whisper if they want to talk.

RULE NB 2: Servants are supposed to let masters go upstairs or downstairs, “giving too” if they meet them on the stairs.

RULE NB 3: Servants should keep their hands folded and not do hand gestures when they are speaking.

RULE NB 4: Servants must be neutral and not give their opinion.

RULE NB 5: Servants are not allowed to invite anyone. If they would like to do so, they ought to ask the butler or the housekeeper.

RULE NB 6: Servants are forbidden to have a girlfriend or a girlfriend if they don’t want to get fired.

RULE NB 7: Servants had better pay for the things they damage or break.

Hinchingbrooke House

The web article talks in addition about the way the masters treat their staff. For example, they expect their servants to be respectful, whereas they give themselves the right to rename certain members of the staff because it would bother them to remember their real names.

Nowadays, the servants’ status has changed. The modern version of the butler is the PA, a personal assistant, who can help businessmen or businesswomen, actors or actresses, singers or other famous people. These PAs are given rules too such as the following ones:

RULE NB 1: Each time you see your boss, you have to greet your boss (be careful that he/she is not busy!).

RULE NB 2: You should make blue M&M’s available when your boss asks for some ones.

RULE NB 3: You must carry all your boss’s belongings.

RULE NB 4: Never wear red. It disturbs your boss.

RULE NB 5: Your boss’s bed must be tidied every morning at 8am in 2, 75 minutes exactly.

RULE NB 6: Don’t cry or sigh when your boss is near you.

RULE NB 7: The orange juice has to be made by yourself every morning (your boss can’t stand the pulp!)

RULE NB 8: You ought to be invisible when visitors come.

RULE NB 9: You had better read again these rules twice a day.

RULE NB 10: It is forbidden for you to ask for better wages. Your boss will let you know if he/she is ready to give you a rise.

These rules must have been dictated to a personal assistant by the way…

What we can conclude about the development of the relations between masters and servants? On the one hand, we can notice that there are lots of similarities between the rules even though the first ones are a hundred years older! Servants and assistants have to be completely submissive and available for their masters. Their entire life depends on their boss’s requests. Furthermore, they have to show that they are of a lower rank. Some rules from both areas are quite ridiculous too and are not useful for the tasks to be better discharged. On the other hand, the conditions faced by servants have varied throughout history. Thanks to the rules themselves, we can wonder if the bosses (particularly the stars) have become more whimsical, cruel and completely self centred. But perhaps it depends on the masters! Besides, the main difference between the two jobs and the two periods is the sharing out of the duties. The rules are more “general” for the servants from the beginning of the 20^th century. There were different jobs for each task: a chauffeur, a chef, a housemaid,…The PA has to do many different kinds of jobs! Even if he/she is not alone to satisfy his/her master, there are fewer people working for him/her. Last but not least, workers have rights nowadays. Movements for labour rights, women’s rights and immigrant rights brought the difficult working conditions to the foreground. In 2011, the Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers was adopted. But the servants or domestic workers are not necessarily PAs and sometimes they can be hidden. For them, it can be said that the situation didn’t improve. If we focus just on the case of the personal assistant, Lady Gaga is a good example since her PA shows that relationships between servants and masters are not really different compared to the ones in Downton Abbey! Admittedly, she lodged a complaint, but it was because she was exploited by the famous singer. Imagine if you had to work everyday without any rest, to stay with your boss even during the night, if you weren’t able to speak to any family or friends and if you had to do all the thankless tasks that your boss doesn’t want to do…Yet the story would surely be different from the master’s point of view…

Lady Gaga and her PA