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This course is for anyone with an interest in the cultural history of servants, working-class writing, or eighteenth-century English literature and history.
This course will give you the skills and knowledge to undertake self-directed study of literature and films about domestic service and about eighteenth-century Britain. Detailed reading lists with suggestions of additional literary and critical texts to look at will be supplied by the tutor. The course could also lead to further literature classes at the Mary Ward Centre or elsewhere.
In this course we’ll read extracts from poems and novels that were written by and about servants in eighteenth-century Britain and France. We’ll explore these texts alongside other cultural material, such as instructional writing and visual art. Each week, we’ll watch a modern film alongside the historical text, to explore resonances between the past and the present. We’ll also engage with literary and historical studies of domestic service and feminist writing on domestic labour.
Week 1. Servants, violence, and the uncanny. Text: Daniel Defoe, Roxana (1724) and its multiple re-written endings. Film: Beauty and the Beast (1946 directed by Jean Cocteau, and/or 1991 Disney version).
Week 2. Servants write back (I). Texts: Stephen Duck, The Thresher’s Labour (1730); Mary Collier, The Woman’s Labour (1739); excerpts from eighteenth-century handbooks for servants. Film: Roma, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (2018).
Week 3. Moral and immoral servants. Texts: Samuel Richardson, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) and excerpts from satirical rejoinders – Henry Fielding, Shamela (1741) and Eliza Haywood, Anti-Pamela (1741). Film: Diary of a Chambermaid, directed by Luis Buñuel (1964).
Week 4. Servants or masters? Text: Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist (1765–80). Film: The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey (1963).
Week 5. Servants write back (II). Texts: works by later eighteenth-century poets who worked as servants (Elizabeth Hands, Mary Leapor, Ann Yearsley); a selection of modern works by servant writers, artists, and activists including Madalena dos Santos Reinbolt. Film: films by The Voice of Domestic Workers.
Week 6. Servants, tyrants, and outcasts. Text: Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman; or, Maria (1798); excerpts from William Godwin, Things As They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794). Film: Parasite, directed by Bong Joon Ho (2019).
By the end of the course you should be able to:
- Understand the expectations, fears, and desires attached to servants in eighteenth-century Britain and modern Europe
- Make connections between the style and form of eighteenth-century literature and the historical conflicts shaping eighteenth-century culture and society
- Evaluate similarities and differences between eighteenth-century servant writing and modern art and film depicting servants
- Undertake further independent study of eighteenth-century literature, using methods and concepts gained in this course
The course is interactive: teaching is grounded in discussion, facilitated by the tutor. Each class will consist of a short lecture followed by a seminar discussion, including close readings of selected passages, collaborative work in pairs and small groups, and some short writing tasks. You’ll be invited to give brief presentations on topics that especially interest you, shaping the focus of each session.
A few of the texts are quite long, but key passages to focus on will be suggested each week, in case you don’t have time to read the whole book and watch the film. The tutor will send out a brief preparation task in the week before each session, to help guide your reading and viewing. A full reading list will also be supplied, with suggestions for further study.
Your progress will be assessed through your responses to the preparation tasks, your presentations, and your contributions to discussion, and through quizzes and creative exercises.
All the texts that we’ll look at are out of copyright and are available to read online. The films are available to rent online or buy. If you prefer to have a physical copy, good editions (published by Penguin, Oxford World’s Classics, Broadview etc) can be bought new or second hand for under £10, or borrowed from a library.
You’ll be expected to read the texts and watch the films in advance of each class and to make some notes in response to the preparation task. Key passages to focus on will be suggested each week, in case you don’t have time to read the whole book.
The tutor will send out a reading list before the first session, which will also include suggestions for further reading and study.
See how long it will take you to get to college. Please select the campus of the course you wish to study.