Work

Abstract

Abstract Relationships with domestic servants were among the longest-lasting and most complicated of Virginia Woolf’s life. For Woolf, domestic spaces are not private but shared, bringing women of different classes into intimate and sometimes uncomfortable proximity. Woolf’s life also spans a time of significant changes in the institution of domestic service in Britain, changes that affect Woolf’s own experience of domesticity and shape her writing. This chapter explores the intertwined contexts of domesticity and class in Woolf’s life and her writing, showing the contradictions and complexities in her thinking over time and across genres. As Alison Light has shown, Woolf’s attitude towards domestic workers often reflected ingrained class prejudices; feminist critics may be disturbed at how often servants mark the limits of Woolf’s imagination. Yet Woolf’s writing also demonstrates a career-long effort to think through the ‘servant problem’, an effort that shapes her aesthetic, her feminism, and her domestic life.