So young seamstresses who refused to become housemaids may have been trading short term penury for longer term independence within marriage, as opposed to the security combined with repression of domestic service.

After graduating from high school, my mom worked as a domestic in Shaughnessy, which continues to be a wealthy enclave in Vancouver. I only learned that she had been a maid when she was into her mid-80′s and there was a picture of her in her uniform. Who is that? Looking back, my mother seemed to have a lot of knowledge about domestic activity – how to wax and polish a floor (with paste wax and an electric polishing machine – something no one else in our modest suburban neighbourhood owned), how to shine the mirrors with the old bath towels before they went into the wash, rotating the sheets top to bottom halfway through the week, and how to iron those heavy linen sheets (hint: spray with water and roll in a plastic bag – the trick is how to press without letting the sheet touch the floor). In retrospect, my mother was a good housekeeper, but always seemed angry when she was doing housework. It was not something she enjoyed, and she did not try to teach me these skills while I lived at home. At age 80, when she had a stroke, she acceded to a housekeeper once a week for a very short period. She did not like having someone else doing her housework, a matter not based on economics. She said she needed to do the work herself as part of her rehabilitation. Maybe. What strikes me now is that instead of expressing the pleasure of home ownership around household tasks that other mothers seemed to have (at least to my young eyes), my mom seemed to be conflicted. It is too late to ask her, and I now wonder how much it had to do with her period as a domestic.

“In the Southern States, where slaves are trained bytheir masters and mistresses with, special reference to the service of the family in the department of labour allotted them, the difficulty of which we speak is not realized to any great extent. Servitude is their not, as it has been that of their ancestors, and they are, for the most part, ignorant of any higher destiny being attainable or even desirable ; and multitudes of them are contentedly happy, and free from any aspirations after a change of their condition, which, though one of bondage and dependance, is attended by no care or anxiety for the means of subsistence, which with them is the ultimatum of desire.

But in the non-slaveholding states, and especially in the northern cities, the case is widely different. The coloured people are free, and when they can find any employment, however menial, which they can conduct on their own behalf, they refuse to become hired servants, or the domestics in families, regarding such service as beneath them, approaching, as they seem to think, to the nature of slavery. And of those who are compelled, for want of subsistence, to enter domestic service, it is their misfortune more than their fault to say that, for the most part, they are mere eye-servants, and are not often found either qualified or trustworthy.
Their number being very inconsiderable, our population in the North have to be mainly dependant on the Irish and German emigrants, who constitute the great mass of our domestics ; for most strangely it has come to pass that white females, especially in the humble walks of life, however humble, regard the condition of hired servants as beneath them, and the domestic duties of the household too degrading for freeborn Americans !
They prefer harder labour, coarser fare, and destitution of a comfortable shelter, if they can only be seamstresses, tailoresses, hat and shoe binders, book-folders, shopkeepers, milliners, or anything else except the hired girls, helps, or domestics of a family. Multitudes of them in all our cities toil from Monday morning until Saturday night in miserable garrets, hovels, and even cellars, working at prices which stint
them for even the necessaries of life, wither their health, dim their eyes, and often sacrifice their lives, who might be actively and healthily employed in the bustling duties of domestics, at ample wages, with the comforts and even luxuries of life, and a good home. But such is their infatuation on this particular subject, that very few American girls, of suitable age for household service, can anywhere be found in the capacity of
domestic servants. It is for this reason that Irish and German domestics are almost universally employed
in the northern cities, and these are, for the most part, wholly uninstructed in the duties of household service ; and however willing multitudes of them are to work for hire, they have to be taught by the mistress of the family even the most common kinds of service,
being, for the most part, wholly ignorant of the plainest cooking, house-cleaning, washing, ironing, &c., so that they often receive wages for months before they begin
to make themselves useful in the family, or can at all be relied on for their every-day routine of duty. By this time they often become corrupted by the intercourse they have with other servants during their frequent leisure, and are prompted to demand an advance of wages,
and to make exactions of time for visiting their numerous cousins and other relatives from the old country, as well as to fill your kitchen with strangers, both male and female, until the annoyance becomes insufferable. Next they abruptly leave the family where they have been taught at great pains, and have but just learned the work they are required to do, either to seek a nurse’s place, or some lighter form of service, for
higher wages, or, perhaps, to get married to some one of their countrymen, whom you have allowed to quarter upon your premises rather than risk the loss of your servant, now that she has learned how to be useful. These are but a few items in the list of grievances which are perennially multiplied.”

Also interesting is the fact that servants changed so rapidly. I have another wonderful quote on that that I will post soon.

Thanks Judith for the clarification. And to clarify back, I think the entitled young ladies do learn to cook in these classes and do get their hands dirty. As to cooking programs, their appeal escapes me too. Perhaps it’s like magic, perhaps it’s a dream world of luxury and elegance for all the insistence on ease.

While this is not a parallel to the lady and the maid cooking class, it still makes wonder why an entitled lady would take such a class, and why the cashier lady is comforted by watching Emeril.

Under such circumstances as here alluded to, it is obvious that the classification of servants recognised in England is impracticable in America. And, moreover, the high notions of equality and independence inspired by a ” free country” would render such an army of servants in a household as unmanageable as a regiment of dragoons, and as dangerous to the peace and safety of a family as a ” gunpowder plot.” Indeed, there are very few in this country whose income would justify so large an outlay for domestic wages as the foregoing table shows, nor is there any family establishment for private residence in America which could furnish occasion for so many servants

Judith, is the wonderment that cooking classes exist or that cooking classes for the upper class exist? And I’d be interested to know what you think has replaced them. Cookbooks?