Читать книгу The Real Life Downton Abbey - Jacky Hyams - Страница 24

Servants are always seriously underpaid and over-exploited. Over hundreds of years, the poorest people are expected to be grateful for food and shelter, in return for what is usually incessant, hard physical labour.

They accept that their masters and betters rule their lives, simply because there are no other avenues of work. If you are at the bottom of the heap, you either starve or get on with the job in hand. And if you are fortunate, you get an employer who treats you with a degree of consideration.

In previous centuries, some country-house owners regarded the servants as part of the family. But by the nineteenth century this idea had started to fade, though it did survive in a few estates.