Cradle and all: Nursemaids, domesticity, and power in Victorian Britain.

摘要

In this dissertation I examine the figure of the nursemaid in nineteenth-century Britain, questioning the degree to which the idea of Victorian domesticity was sustained and also invaded by this threatening yet essential outsider. My aim is to focus attention on nursemaids by investigating how literary and cultural texts represent nursemaids either as figures controlled by the middle and upper classes or as dangerously powerful individuals with excessive influence over children of higher social classes. I place working-class autobiographies in conversation with domestic manuals and novels in order to explore how the tension caused by nursemaids in homes manifests itself differently in a range of texts.; I begin by arguing that domestic manuals written by middle-class women, such as Isabella Beeton, Sarah Stickney Ellis, and Sarah Lewis simultaneously acknowledge and contribute to the power of nursemaids in homes. I then explore the ways in which the figures of the nursemaid and the wet nurse are central to Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son, in which the nurses' influence on the world of business (as represented by the family firm) exposes the interdependence of domestic and imperial relationships.; Turning my attention to nursemaids' autobiographies, I explore how nursemaids negotiate contradictory discourses that are connected in some ways to middle-class concerns, but for the most part are distinct. Aunt Janet's Legacy to Her Nieces emphasizes Janet Bathgate's use of religious beliefs to justify her ultimate rejection of domestic service, which establishes her as an economic and spiritual agent. The Autobiography of Mary Smith reveals the conflicts that accompany a nursemaid's search for a culturally “classless” space in which intellectual pursuits, such as writing poetry, will not be hindered by class status or work as a servant.; This project thus begins the important work of establishing a base of scholarship that searches for and values the perspectives of working-class nursemaids to supplement accounts of domestic life focused on their employers' viewpoints. The figure of the nursemaid demonstrates that power struggles took place within the home and that a significant amount of economic and maternal power rested in the working-class hands that rocked the cradle.