Abstract
ABSTRACTFar from being a trivial detail, clothes fundamentally define who we are and how we are perceived by others. Drawing on a large sample of French and British servants’ memoirs, this article explores how dress served a crucial but contrasting role in the way French and British servants articulated their identities within and outside the home between 1900 and 1939. It argues that servants’ dress was deeply linked to the nature of the occupation in each country and the structure of their respective female labour markets.
Highlights
Autobiographies are important sources for the study of marginal groups whose voices do not boom through the official archives
Autobiographies are bursting with revealing digressions and significant details, memories of everyday life, of what was eaten on a certain day, which film was seen, what dress was worn
It is based upon the premise that to understand marginal groups we must actively read at the margins of their stories
Summary
Autobiographies are important sources for the study of marginal groups whose voices do not boom through the official archives. Parisian shop assistants in department stores, for example, were referred to as ‘the queens of the urban proletariat’ because of their lavish clothing.[91] most shop assistants kept working for small family-run shops.[92] In these stores, most of the workforce was either family or servants, dressing very far away from the glamorous standards of the shop assistant in a department store and enjoying less independence.[93] These women often wore an apron for what was deemed a traditional female occupation in the sphere of the family economy It was unlikely for French servants to compare themselves to nurses as the professionalisation of nursing was incomplete and the occupation remained dominated by nuns well into the interwar period.[94] The religious roots of nursing were apparent in the nurse uniform, which closely resembled the dress of a nun with a long white veil.[95] The slow transformation of the occupation was linked to a deep suspicion of women’s waged labour in French society. In a society where women’s work was still significantly happening within the family economy, it was difficult for French servants to make sense of their experiences as a distinct occupational group
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