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Title: Suited for Service: Racialized Rationalizations for the Ideal Domestic Servant from the Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: From the early 1800s through the 1920s the image of the ideal domestic servant varied dramaticallynative white women, European immigrant women, and black women. However, at all times the racial/ethnic identity of the domestic servant played a critical role. The transition from the casualness of help to the formality of the domestic servant relationship marked the historical moment in which a subordinate racial identity became a precondition of servanthood. The semantic change from help or hired girl to domestic servant reflected a more fundamental change in the nature, organization, and expectation of the work role. Using a comparative-historical approach, we provide a sociological analysis of how shifting labor patterns and societal demands led to the decline of help, the rise of domestic service, and the centrality of a racialized identity to the performance of household work during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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Authors: Wooten, Melissa E.; Branch, Enobong H.

Periodical (Full): Social Science History

Issue: 2

Volume: 36

Pages: 169-189

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Race and Ethnicity

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