Ethnic Jokes: Mocking the Working Irish Woman: Winning Essay, Journal of Victorian Culture Graduate Essay Prize 2021

Abstract

Abstract The figure of the laughably ignorant Irish maid was one of the most recognizable Irish stereotypes in Anglo-American print culture over the late nineteenth century. Jokes about ‘Bridget’ and ‘Biddy’ crossed the Atlantic in both directions, contributing to a transnational repository of comic Irish tropes. While the cultural representation of Irish immigrants was often shaped by regional concerns, Irish servant gags were comparable, and at times identical, across locations – an indication of just how interlinked domestic sensibilities were in England and the United States. Ethnic humour of this kind partly reflected the prevalence of anti-Irish sentiment, echoing older anti-Irish caricatures. The class and racial biases revealed by transatlantic depictions of the Irish is stressed in the existing literature on Irish diaspora history, and certainly such biases help to explain many of the jokes told about servants. This essay moves beyond these perspectives, however, in arguing that comic representations of domestic service also spoke to the anxiety of the middle and upper classes reliant on external help to maintain household order, an intricate endeavour in the context of elaborate Victorian domestic protocols. The huge volume of social commentary devoted to the so-called servant question over these years was a marker of the discomfort felt by employers about managing domestic labour, and joking about the competence of maids and cooks was one means of alleviating some of the tensions prompted by servant-keeping.