The balance of power in nineteenth-century country estates was firmly weighted in the employer’s favour, making it difficult for servants to carve out an identity, find a voice, or establish self-worth. Their characters, morality and conduct were often problematized by the upper classes, and they were frequently derided, as Davidoff (1993) suggests, for ‘having very ambivalent attitudes towards their employers’. Applying discourse analysis to data derived from nineteenth-century servant letters uncovered in two archived collections (the Savernake Estate and Mote House) this article reveals the complex tensions and ambiguities that characterised working relations between masters and servants in such households. By focussing explicitly on how servants managed perceptions of themselves in moments of rupture this article considers how their narratives can be re-conceived as active dialogues in which different representations of the self and the complex layers of the domestic service relationship are continually and creatively re-formulated.

中文翻译：

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“我只是一个制服仆人”：考察 19 世纪乡间别墅主仆关系的破裂

19 世纪乡村庄园的权力平衡完全有利于雇主，使仆人难以确立身份、发声或建立自我价值。他们的性格、道德和行为经常受到上层阶级的质疑，而且他们经常被嘲笑，正如大卫杜夫 (1993) 所暗示的那样，因为他们“对雇主的态度非常矛盾”。本文将话语分析应用于两个档案馆藏（萨韦纳克庄园和莫特之家）中发现的 19 世纪仆人信件中的数据，揭示了这种家庭中主人和仆人之间工作关系的复杂紧张和含糊不清。