Female Servants in Early Modern England is a social history written by Charmian Mansell, a lecturer on early modern England at the University of Sheffield. She received her PhD in 2016 from Exeter University, and Female Servants is her first book.
The book argues that the experience of 16th and 17th century female servants has been narrowly understood in a variety of ways in the historiography. Mansell details a historiographical stereotype that it was mostly poor young women who became servants and that, in doing so, they left the wider economy to do purely domestic labor within the vulnerable confines of the patriarchal households of their social superiors.
Mansell challenges every aspect of this, arguing that women of a variety of ages and social classes became servants and that they often served their social equals as well as their “betters.” She challenges the idea that female servants did purely domestic labor and argues that rather than merely attending to families’ personal needs, female servants did labor in a variety of economic sectors and that they should be seen as “economic and social centres of their communities” (2) and “at the root of economic growth.”(2)
But Mansell doesn’t stop at resituating female servants within existing hierarchies. She argues that the framing that female servants existed within patriarchal households should be questioned. She does this for several stated reasons. First, Mansell argues that many households were not stereotypically patriarchal either because they were not headed by men or because men did not conform to didactic understandings of patriarchy. (10)
Additionally, Mansell argues that female servants did not exist purely within the households. Like those who surrounded them, they were members of society who moved through a variety of spaces. Mansell argues that the temptation to see female agency always through the lens of patriarchal authority can reify structures that, in practice, were more fluid. (10) Instead of searching “for the ways in which women ‘participated’ in social processes which are still defined in terms of male experience,” (15) Mansell seeks to understand “female experiences” on their own terms. She argues that by understanding both male and female experiences, a “human point-of-view” may be sought. (15)
Mansell focuses her book on rural female servants in the south and west of England. She notes that much research has been done on urban London populations of female servants, but as only a quarter of the English population was rural in the mid 17th century (16), she argues that a study of rural populations outside of London is merited. Rather than a broad study of rural servitude across all of England, Mansell focuses on five dioceses in the south and west of the country.
She takes a bottom-up approach in her book as befits her subject matter. She divides her book into three parts. In the first, she describes who female servants were and how they appear in her sources, in the second, she describes “patterns of labor,” and in the third, she describes
“[spatial], [social], and [temporal]” aspects of female servitude. (19) To make her arguments, she heavily relies on ecclesiastical court records with disputes that involved female servants. While she is cautious of the potential bias in how the cases may have been recorded, Mansell emphasizes that they are nevertheless representative of plausible occurrences, even if they did not all occur as stated. (13) She evaluates the cases extensively from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives.
When examining the cases qualitatively, Mansell is a storyteller. She skillfully reads between the lines and conveys her anecdotes in a narrative form that at times blends genres. She finds stories and details in creative places. For example, chapter two relies heavily on analysis of signatures to infer details about literacy and, by proxy, class. At times her approach might be speculative, but when it is she acknowledges it.
In general, Mansell makes an effort to explain the decisions she makes throughout her work. These explanations are occasionally personal. For example, she explains that she “unapologetically” chose to conclude her book with the story of Issot Riches because “–for some intangible reason – [she] was drawn to her when [she] found her story. ”(297) I appreciated Mansell’s honest and open approach and felt it added personality to her book in addition to adding context and explanation.
While Mansell shines as a storyteller, she does not neglect quantitative approaches in her book. Her chapters are filled with tables recording gender percentages, age breakdowns, space classifications, master demographics, and a wealth of other details. What stood out to me was chapter 6, where Mansell calculated a variety of details about female servants’ work lives, including the busiest times of day, weekly schedule, and percentages of different categories of labor.
Mansell succeeds at her thesis while mostly avoiding overstating her point. For example, she pushes back at the idea that servitude existed mainly as a life cycle position for girls before marriage, while acknowledging that it “was predominantly an experience of youth” (120) She highlights the agency and centrality of female servants, but also notes the ways in which servitude could be less of an opportunity and more of a necessity “that was not empowering.” (120) While I wasn’t fully convinced by some of her arguments about the economy and the patriarchal nature of the household, she articulated herself with nuance. Mansel succeeds at both bringing individual stories to life and illuminating wider trends. Overall, the book shines as a multifaceted case study of how to do bottom-up history well.