Servants in Literature (a 10th-Anniversary Post)

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Today is the exact 10th anniversary of this weekly literature blog! To mark that birthday, below is a rerun of my very first post here on July 14, 2014:

Some real-life servants are treated badly by their rich employers, but many fictional servants are treated nicely by their authors. A small, wish-fulfilling solace for readers in this time of soaring economic inequality.

Literature’s servants and other “hired help” are often smarter, funnier, and more compassionate than their “betters.” Perhaps that’s partly because they have to work hard for a living, while some of the wealthy get their money the old-fashioned way — inheriting it. Ah yes, the merit system…

Servants in literature also help us judge their masters. You can tell a lot about an affluent person’s decency (or lack of) by how they treat their so-called “inferiors.”

Some stand-out servants in fiction? Jeeves, of course, in the engaging and hilarious works of P.G. Wodehouse. That valet is incredibly bright and well-spoken, and helps his congenial but somewhat dim “master” Bertie Wooster out of many a scrape.

Another famous servant character is Nelly Dean, who’s the pragmatic voice of reason in a Wuthering Heights novel filled with hyper-passionate and/or weak-minded people. Nelly grounds Emily Bronte’s superb book, and helps make the hard-to-believe events in it seem believable. Of course, another servant in that novel is boorish religious fanatic Joseph, but we won’t talk about him… 🙂

Nineteenth-century English literature also offers us Nanny from the longish short story “The Sad Fortunes of Reverend Amos Barton” in the Scenes of Clerical Life collection George Eliot wrote before embarking on her astonishing career as a novelist. Nanny is the servant who memorably denounces a freeloading countess who overstays her welcome in the Bartons’ struggling household and even endangers the health of Amos’ kindhearted wife Milly.

How about Lee in John Steinbeck’s gripping East of Eden? That servant is an intellectual guy who cleverly deals with anti-Asian prejudice in the American West of the late 1800s/early 1900s and serves as a surrogate father to the Trask sons when biological father Adam is traumatized by a disastrous marriage.

Then there are the underlings/sidekicks such as Sancho Panza in Miguel Cervantes’ iconic Don Quixote and Samwise Gamgee in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. In the former book, squire Sancho is a humorous/competent companion to the less-than-practical Quixote. In the latter work, gardener Samwise becomes an invaluable friend to Frodo Baggins — who, while admirable and brave, would have been in dire straits without Sam’s help during the Tolkien trilogy’s epic quest.

Speaking of funny characters, and characters named Sam, it’s hard to beat Sam Weller of Charles Dickens’ The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club when it comes to literature’s all-time underlings.

There’s also Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, in which loyal butler Stevens comes to regret a major missed opportunity in his life.

Last but by no means least, we can’t forget the many fictional African-American characters forced into servant work or outright slavery — whether it be in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Alex Haley’s Roots, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and many other novels. “Uncle Tom” became a derogatory term, but Tom in the book is quite courageous in his turn-the-other-cheek way — and is clearly the moral center of Stowe’s story.

James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans and Rita Mae Brown’s Murder at Monticello are among the numerous other novels that have interesting references to the horrific institution of slavery — the ultimate servanthood.

What are your favorite literary works featuring servants, butlers, maids, valets, and others of that station in life?

My comedic new 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a local U.S. congresswoman rightly calling for President Biden not to seek reelection, retaliation against employees who filed lawsuits, and various other topics — is here.

88 thoughts on “Servants in Literature (a 10th-Anniversary Post)”

  2. Thank you, Dave for this post. My favorites are Jeeves (of course) and Mr. Stevens. Although I am a fan of Tolkien´s Lord of the rings, I am not sure to completely like Sam. Neither he is presented as a servant nor a friend, but is both. Anyway, could I propose Justin Quayle as a servant of his beloved wife Tessa, in The Constant gardener?

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    • Thank you, rincondesmendoza! Your favorites are definitely memorable “hired help.” And, yes, Samwise is a servant/friend hybrid — really more of the latter. I haven’t read “The Constant Gardener,” but the one John le Carré novel I have read — “The Russia House” — was great!

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  3. Ten years! Wow–I hope you’ve had fun. Ever since I discovered your blog, Dave, I’ve certainly had fun reading it.

    As for servants, lots of great examples have been mentioned, like Jeeves, Mrs. Danvers, Figaro (from the marriage of!), and Jim of Huck Finn fame. I don’t think I noticed anyone mentioning Calpurnia from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. I always remember her saying to Scout, after she made fun of Walter Cunningham pouring molasses all over his food, “That boy’s your company, and if wants to eat up the tablecloth, you let him, you hear?” Southern hospitality in a nutshell.

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  4. I congratulate you, Dave. on the site’s long life, given these changeable and fickle times in which we live.

    I was with you in the Huffington Post period, and happily followed you here, which means, our digital correspondence has been going on even longer.

    You are, as I’ve written before, a welcoming and generous person to all who write in, tending your garden with care, and even love.

    And I wish you and author Misty critical ans commercial success!

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    • Thank you, jhNY! 🙂 I greatly appreciate the very kind words! 🙂 Yes, you and a few others — including Bebe and Susan — go back to the three pre-WordPress years I was blogging about books for the Huffington Post. Though things kind of imploded for the blogging part of that site, I’m grateful for the online friends I made there. And for the online friends I’ve made via WordPress since 2014.

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      • jhNY has been having some computer issues while not at home, so he emailed me with a request to post the comment below containing examples of servants in literature. Great thoughts and descriptions!

        The comment:

        Fortuitously for the week’s topic, I just yesterday finished Willkie Collins’ “The Dead Secret”, one of the author’s less-read suspense fiction titles. The plot centers on the doings and character of a female servant, whose life has been afflicted by, “fear and failure”, as she herself put it, and also by the tragic decision, and later a deathbed pledge, made on her behalf by her willful employer,  a flamboyant former stage actress, whom she obsequiously adored and found, in all matters, irresistible. Suffused throughout the novel is her habituation to service and servility, and the extreme difficulty, much of which she has placed on herself, she has in hiding away from those of superior social standing, who would find her out, and force her to revelations of which they are literally unaware, yet about which they are undauntedly curious. The despair, the hopelessness she carries within her in her flight to insecure obscurity is founded on her unwavering belief that, whatever she may do, she will somehow be discovered, given the class, resources and interest of her pursuers.

        In this way, she reminded me of “Caleb Williams”, an earlier novel by William Godwin, Williams being a house servant too, and in possession of his master’s great secret too, which he has found out by his own industry, driven by a ruinous curiosity he cannot resist.  But, once known to possess it, his master, a nobleman, will search the nation by way of agents and the law and the privilege of his high estate indefatigably till Williams is run to earth.  Escape, and he is again pursued. He is alone and friendless, and beyond his own wits, resourceless too, and cannot, try as he might, oppose the power of his master’s will to discover him and bring him under his power.

        The gulf between the servant class and their employers is vast, and enforced, sometimes gently and almost undetectably, but sometimes with a presumption that is monstrous, though in “The Dead Secret,” this gulf is somewhat reduced, given the more liberal enforcement of class distinction of the mid-19th century, as opposed, in the case of “Caleb Williams,” to the mores and customs of English society in the latter part of the 18th century.  But service shading into servility, ingrained and enforced by years in that state of employment, persists by means of social inferiority so deeply internalized as to be natural to those so afflicted, and this troubling and troubled obsequiousness is a state of being neither character can overcome.  

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  5. 💥🌟 CONGRATLATIONS! 🌟💥

    Dave, cheers, a toast to 10 more! 🥂

    Okay, I’m going with smarter. Seems you may have something heroic in mind, but my example is still a servant.

    The Housekeeper by Joy Fielding is an excellent gripper about a very competent, hard working and smart housekeeper (Elyse Woodley). Hired by a woman (Jodi Bishop) to take care of her aging parents (mother has Parkinson’s), the housekeeper is not just everything I just laid out, she is suddenly wearing mother’s jewelry.

    Joy wrote this unexpectedly during Covid. We all dealt with those days in our own ways. Joy wrote another best seller.

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      • Ha! I tried to say something, but nothing. It would be a drag to spoiler a JF book! 😅
        It’s simpler than Cul-deSac, but still quite intriguing.
        It involves legal ease, as many of her books do.
        Her husband is a celebrated Canadian lawyer (ret) so all the legalities you read in her books are spot on.

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  6. 10 years, well done. I’m on 8 as I started in 2016. The first books that spring to mind in this category were both recommended by our good friend, Martina. The Sealwoman’s Gift, also about slavery, but the slaves were from Iceland, and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. An interesting post, Dave.

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  11. Jeeves is definitively my favorite servant protagonist. In general I find that butler servants with their stoic-rational attitude spiced with some dry humor giving a good lead to follow the storyline. And what happened when the cat ordered a glass of milk at the bar? Did the cat pay (supposing they had milk in that bar)? The only thing my cat ever brought with him was a living mouse he released inside the house and then we had for two years mice issues. Could write my own version of “About Mice and Man”.

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    • Thank you, Shaharee! I agree that Jeeves is quite a character.

      When Misty ordered milk at the bar, his intention was to give half of it to the zebra. After putting the order on his tabby…um…tab. 🙂

      Ha — 😂  — I hear you about cat and mice. Misty has obsessed over quite a few in his day.

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  14. Congratulations on 10 years of amazing posts and brilliant conversations, Dave. Life goes by “zoom zoom” especially when books are involved. Your first post was the beginning of many more to come.

    My first thought was of Passepartout, the French companion of Phineas Fogg in Jules Verne’s novel “Around the World in Eighty Days”. He lives up to his well-suited name (Master Key) by being Fogg’s reliable guide throughout their journey. In a crucial moment, Passepartout’s quick thinking and bravery save Fogg’s future wife from a perilous situation, showcasing his indispensable role in the adventure.

    When I think of classic literature, several books feature a long-suffering servant to a wealthy person or family. Examples include “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë, where the character of Mrs. Fairfax serves the wealthy Rochester family, and “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens, with the character of Joe Gargery as a loyal and suffering servant to the wealthy Miss Havisham.

    I find that servants play a crucial role in literature – they are witnesses to both the private lives of their masters and the workings of the household. They often serve as a narrative device to provide insight into the social hierarchy, class dynamics, and power struggles within a story.

    Quite frankly, I find them, at times, to be more interesting than the main characters.

    “Passepartout was astounded, and, though ready to attempt anything to get over Medicine Creek, thought the experiment proposed a little too American.” Jules Verne “Around the World in Eighty Days”

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    • Thank you, Rebecca! 🙂 Yes, those 10 years went by quite fast!

      Terrific mention of Passepartout of “Around the World in Eighty Days.” Yes, people in so-called subsidiary positions can often be of incredible service. Or they can be very unhappy, as you note. Not being in control of one’s own life definitely contributes to that. Like you, I also frequently find them to be a lot more interesting than the ostensibly “main” characters, whether they end up being narrators or not. 🙂

      “…a little too American” — that’s a lament astute enough to fit many situations!

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  15. Congrats on your 10th blog anniversary, Dave! The servant that first came to mind was the loyal English butler Stevens in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. We all serve or are servants in some capacity within our families, communities, and society.

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    • Thank you, Rosaliene! Kazuo Ishiguro’s butler in “The Remains of the Day” is definitely one of the most memorable “servants” in recent literary history.

      And that’s a very accurate observation that almost everyone does servant-like things in some situations!

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    • It took me a while to warm to Stevens, but when I did, I REALLY did. I’m sure there’s lots of wonderful literature out there that tells the story from the servant’s point of view, but this is the first time I’d come across something that had them so well rounded. I’m looking forward to reading more of Ishigura.

      Dave – congrats on your anniversary. And thank you so much for this very bestest blog on all of the Internet. I’ve greatly enjoyed following it for the last ten years.

      Susan

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      • Thank you, Susan! 🙂 And I’ve enjoyed your great comments in those 10 years. 🙂

        Yes, Kazuo Ishiguro created quite a character, and I’m always grateful when stories are told from the point of view of someone in a “lower” station in life. As I said in the post, that person is often a more admirable and sympathetic character.

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  19. Jeeves is my favorite one for sure, all the servants I can remember are from the Bible stories… Oh wait I can remember one movie where all the servants are main characters, later they made a show out of it. Let me see if I can find the name: Downton Abbey: A New Era, a really well made British production.

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  20. Until relatively modern times servants were indispensable and therefore ubiquitous . . . it was considered gauche to throw your own poop out the window. Jim in ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,’ the title character of Plautus’ ‘Pseudolus’ (and a stock character of other ancient comedies), the evil Oswald in ‘King Lear’ and droll Launcelot Gobbo in ‘A Merchant of Venice,’ not to speak of a number of characters whose changing fortunes included temporary servitude.

    >

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    • Thank you, boletusc96aaa8201! Excellent point about how servants were more a “thing” prior to modern times, though of course there are still unfortunately all kinds of class divisions nowadays. And, yes, there’s both permanent servitude and temporary servitude. I appreciate the examples you offered from various works!

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    • Thank you, Dan! 🙂 Interesting mention of “The Great Gatsby”! I haven’t read that novel in so long that I’ve forgotten how the servants were treated, but not surprised they were basically ignored by the author and the characters in the world F. Scott Fitzgerald usually wrote about in various books and stories.

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  23. First off, many happy 10th anniversary for your blog, Dave, and thanks for the many interesting blogs you’ve posted since then. Servants in literature – you give some great examples here. I haven’t read all these works, so I’ll have to get around to them at some point. For some others: the Dromio brothers, servants to the Antipholus brothers, help the comedy along in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. And let’s not forget the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, a surrogate mother to Juliet who critically keeps the secret marriage of the lovers a secret and risks punishment to herself if discovered. Then, how about George Moore’s best work of Naturalism, Esther Waters, the kitchen maid who courageously tries to go it along as a single mother, at a time when society was against her? Or there’s J M Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton, with the resourceful butler Crichton becoming the natural leader when shipwrecked on a desert island with his employers. The almost marries the daughter of the family, but resists the temptation not to get them all rescued when the opportunity arises and resumes his place as butler when returned to the UK. To top them all is the play by Pierre Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro which, with its cunning figure of the valet Figaro and his outwitting of his employer, Count Almaviva, who wants to exercise the Droit de seigneur with Suzanne, his wife’s maid and Figaro’s bride-to-be. The play—and its creator—was credited with helping bring about the French Revolution, by both the revolutionary Danton and Napoleon Bonaparte. Louis XVI banned it, until the action was moved from France to Spain, and even then had reservations, although allowing it to be played to a private aristocratic and royal audience—hence right royally shooting himself in the foot. If I think of any more you may be sure I’ll put them up here. In the meantime, though, thanks once more for a thought-provoking subject. 🙂 🙂 🙂

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  25. Peggoty in David Copperfield, Alice Fairfax in Jane Eyre, Mrs. Grose in Turn Of The Screw, Miss Avery in Howards End, And I guess that’s all I can think of at present. Congrats on your 10 year anniversary. We’ve been very fortunate to have enjoyed it thus far. Here’s to another 10. *sigh* Where does the time go? Thanks Dave for sharing your insight into literature and all the book mentions as well as music, art, etc. Susi

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    • Thank you, Shehanne! Great mention; not sure how I left out Mrs. Danvers 10 years ago. 🙂 She was indeed not the most positive of presences. And I agree that servant characters can be excellent subjects for fiction writers!

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  27. 10 years !
    Congratulations.

    Looking back, has it all been positive, worth the effort ? Have there been moments of doubt, I wonder ?
    (Yes, these are my wobbles)

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    • Thank you, Anonymous! 🙂 Definitely worth the effort — conversing with readers of the blog in the comments section, learning about novels/authors I should read, etc., etc.! It does get hard sometimes to think of new topics. 🙂

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