Mrs Breton's book of house hold

Mrs Breton’s Book of House hold Management was edited by Isabella Breton. Mrs Breton is known as one of the first and best cookery writers. Her book of house hold Management was published in 1861.

    We are going to study an extract from this famous book.

   In this extract, we can read servant’s rules which are :

‘‘ 1. Never let your voice be heard by the ladies and gentlemen of the house, except when necessary, and then as little as possible.

  2. Always’ give room’ if you meet one of your employers or betters or the stairs.

  3. Always stand still and keep your hands quiet when speaking to a lady or being spoken to and look at the person speaking to you.

  4.Servants should never offeer any opinion to theiur employers, not even to say good night or good morning except in reply to salutation.

  5. No servant is to receive any visitor, frieznd or relative in to the house, or to introduce any person into servants’ hall withput the conent of the butler or housekeeper.

  6. Followers, are strickly forbidden, and any maid fand fraternising with a member of the opposite sex willbe dismissed without a heaving.

  7. Any breakages or damage to the house will be deducted from wages. ’’

These rules are more or less strict : here there are ten rules for an personal assistant, if we were a star.

     The star that I would like to present is Paris Hilton. Her personal assistant got a letter from Paris :

‘‘ Your rules :

1.      Never talk about my life

2.      Never take a picture of me or my family.

3.      You must take an appointment with my beautician EVERY DAY !!!

4.      You have to jog with me and my sport teacher every morning at 6 a.m

5.      You should take my dog, Tinkerbell to  her hairdresser.

6.      You ought to organize my holidays

  / ! \ Be careful, I would like to go to a place where my friends are.

7.      You had better supervise my others assistants.

8.      I think that you should do shopping with me and carry my shopping bags.

9.      You are supposed to do anything  I ask.

10.  You have to be avaible for me, just me , and my dog of course !

11.  You  must organize a lot of parties for me and my friends in my huge house or in my different hotels. You can choose !

I hope that you’ll enjoy you new work ,

XOXO Paris Hilton ’’

  We can deduce that the  rules are different. The rules from the extract are more professional, serious ones. But some rules from the extract are very strict like the rule number 3. It may be  shock for me because  I don’t live in the same period as these servants. My rules are funnier ;  we talk about parties and holidays but some rules are hard like the rule number 4.

Manon Zingarelli and Lara Ergul

Master and servants : still separate worlds ?

December, 15th, 2013 , KUHM Mathieu

Thanks to an extract from A book of Household Management, we know the servants’ rules in the nineteenth century in Great Britain. For example, servants couldn’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, servants had to be silent and not “speak” with their hands either.

Nowadays, servants are called Personal Assistants, they are the modern version of the butlers. They take care of the stars (cinema, music, sport..). They must respect rules too. (doc)

Some things have changed in the last decades. Nowadays, the rules are more personal than before. Usually, there is only one PA while there were several servants in the 19^th century. Today, there is no interference in the PAs’private lives. They can have a boyfriend or other personal relationships. The stars, who have a PA, are more selfish and whimsical than the former masters. In the past, masters gave rules to get things sorted out. They had a different sense of duty and often felt reponsible for their staff.Now, it’s different, stars are whimsical and PAs have to satisfy them.

Both centuries  have differences but masters and servants are still in two different social classes.

 Masters and servants : still separate worlds ?

We read in class an extract from “A book of Household Management” entitled “Servants’ rules”. It was probably written in the last century, in the 1920s.

 Here is the extract :

• Never let your voice be heard by the ladies and gentlemen of the house, except when necessary, and then as little as possible.

• Always ‘give room’ if you meet one of your employers or betters on the stairs.

• Always stand still and keep your hands quiet when speaking to a lady or being spoken to and look at the person speaking to you.

• Servants should never offer any opinion to their employers, nor even to say good night or good morning except in reply to salutation.

• No servant is to receive any Visitor, Friend or Relative into the house;

or to introduce any person into the Servants’ hall without the consent of the Butler or Housekeeper.

• Followers are strictly forbidden, and any maid found fraternising with a member of the opposite sex will be dismissed without a hearing.

• Any breakages or damage to the house will be deducted from wages.

 Nowadays the PA, that is to say the Personal Assistant, is the modern version of the butler. Here is an example of some rules which could be asked by a celebrity :

• Never look at me straight in the eyes.

• You should congratulate me after each scene even if you thinks I am bad.

• (you should boost my self esteem)

• Never take photographs of me when I am on the film set.

• The wall of my hotel room must be white because it gives me a better complexion.

• I want you to be in charge of my official website.

• My assistant is supposed to bring me water every hour.

• I expect you to bring me violets every morning.

• You had better choose private jets than business class in  planes .

• You have to make sure that The temperature of my dressing room is exactly 23 degrees.

• You ought have fashionable clothes every day.

 We can wonder  if anything has changed since the last century…

In the 1920s masters and ladies could intervene in the servants private life and their opinion. The servants were treated like slaves and the masters and ladies like kings and queens. In addition, they were tight-fisted too, because they gave a pittance and they demanded reparation for anything and everything.

Nowadays, the celebrities have only ONE PA who has to do all the things that the servants used to do . Moreover, the stars are whimsical and selfish and being a PA is an absorbing job. However, the celebrities can’t intervene in the PA’s private life and opinion because they are free people and they deserve -and usually get-a better salary than before too.

To conclude we can say that there is still an “Upstairs-Downstairs World” but that the working conditions and the workers’ freedom have markedly improved.

 
   By Camille Huppert and Emilie Mathis