beatrice_otter: Elizabeth Bennet reads (Reading)
beatrice_otter ([personal profile] beatrice_otter) wrote2025-05-25 05:48 pm

Historical Fiction Pet Peeves: Servants

I just read a fic where a character in the Regency period is reflecting on how she'd never imagined she'd be able to have a full-time nursemaid.

Me: Girl, you are and have always been wealthy and you live in an age where labor is CHEAP.

And by "cheap" I mean "so cheap that servants had servants." (Upper level servants in large houses would often have lower-level servants assigned to them as a perk of the job.) So cheap that the gap between "people who were servants" and "people who had servants" was very narrow, and often crossed over the course of a person's lifetime. It was fairly common for working class/poor girls to work as maids for a few years saving up money before they got married, and if they married a reasonably prosperous farmer they would probably be able to afford to hire a maid themselves in good years. (Not "maid" as in "a personal servant to wait on you hand and food," this is "maid" as in "someone to do the nastier/harder bits of cooking and cleaning.")

By 1795, the price of wages for a day laborer was pegged to the price of bread. A gallon loaf weighed 8lbs 11oz, and was theoretically enough to feed a person for a week. Laborers were supposed to make at least three times the cost of a gallon loaf per week, so that if a gallon loaf cost 1 shilling they should be paid at least 3 shillings per week. That is peanuts. For comparison: A pair of wool stockings in the Regency era cost about 2 shillings 6 pence. In other words, a day laborer was paid only a little more per week than the cost of a good pair of socks. Silk stockings--the kind you would wear to a ball--were 12 shillings, or four times the weekly wages of a day laborer.

Combine this with how labor-intensive even the most basic tasks were, and it meant that anybody who could afford servants had them, and anybody above the poverty line could afford them.

Over the course of the 19th Century, the cost of wages relative to the cost of other things rose dramatically, so people had fewer servants and fewer people could afford to have servants. And still, Agatha Christie remembered that when she was young "I couldn’t imagine being too poor to afford servants, nor so rich as to be able to afford a car." She did not grow up wealthy, she grew up middle class. Even in 1900, your average middle-class person in England could not imagine being too poor to afford servants.

This changed radically over the course of the 20th Century; now a middle class person might have a cleaner who comes in once a week, but they definitely will not be able to afford a full-time servant. You have to be wealthy to afford that. So we assume that servants are a mark of huge wealth even in historical periods, when they just ... weren't. This is not helped by the fact that novels set in period times (whether written then or later) rarely mention the servants, so you can read, say, an Austen novel and not have any clue what sort of servants they have. But unless you have researched the issue, it's best to assume they have more servants than you think they had.

tielan: (SGA - conversion)
tielan ([personal profile] tielan) wrote2025-05-24 01:44 pm
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I don't have the space for fandom anymore

There's no room for in it for my brain, no space in my schedule for watching, no community to drag me along with them.

And also, I've become resigned to the fact that I will never get stories about the characters that I want. That my interests are not anywhere near the interests of the majority of viewers, and because what counts is eyeballs (or reader pages, or whatever) then the characters I love - or the archetypes I want to see - are not going to appeal to most people.

It's a little demoralising, and makes it hard to write.

Not to mention the state of the world is steadily wearing on us all. Not just the AI (fuck AI) but also the world and all it's harms. All the hopeful stories I had for analogues and spin-offs of our world are presently crumbling while watching Ukraine, Gaza, the authority of the current US Administration, the right-wingers, Christian Nationalism - not to mention all the tech issues.

*sigh*

I can't remember if it was John Green or someone else (might have been Hank Green) who said during the 2020 election process that he was hesitating over starting a new book, because a 2nd Trump administration would create a very different world to one in which 45 only managed one administration. He was, as it turns out, exceedingly prescient on that front.
tielan: (SGA - teyla)
tielan ([personal profile] tielan) wrote2025-05-23 07:10 pm
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home again home again...

Going home today!

Seriously, I like travel, but not when work comes on top of it. Although being away from Sydney for the last two weeks has been good - the rain that is flooding northern NSW is also raining down in Sydney, albeit not as hard.

May need to check up in the roof cavity tomorrow to get an idea of how it's going up there. Might need to do a bunnings trip first for some decent lighting.

(ps. It's been raining pretty hard in Sydney the last couple of weeks. We're due for a few days' break shortly, just as I get back, hopefully enough to get the garden sorted out)

--

Last day on client site in Melbourne. Next week we're being included on the meetings (theoretically) and told about the issues that arise. And so begins the battle for (office) supremacy…

(ugh. I ate too much breakfast too fast and now I am having regret. Or indigestion. *burp*)

One of the issues in any translation from development to support is starting to recognise the issues that are arising and which ones are going to be perennial problem. There's also the manner in which we take on those issues.

I am a "we'll take it as it comes" kind of person.

My colleague (who is the team lead in this instance) is a "prepare for everything" kind of person.

So we are doing a lot of work to map everything out, determine what is going on, identify where things are happening, and look at possible solutions for issues that are not yet happening, but which might.

I personally tend to think that's a waste of time, but I am perhaps a little bit like the guy whose roof never leaks when it doesn't rain. Also, a lot of guys on the tech monitoring side tend to want pages and pages of directions. (Pages and pages of directions sends me to sleep.)

I'd rather dig out the issue myself than be fed what someone else thinks it is. Of course, that isn't how most support guys tend to think of it. And the up-tops really hate the "trust the techs, they know how to fix it" - which, granted, they often would find that maybe the techs in question don't know how to fix it as knowledge is lost between one support group to the next.

Next week, the processing of handing over the reins is supposed to begin. Whether it does, how much of it actually is given to us, and how we handle it? That's another question. I kind of miss the days of my last client, where if there was a problem, I would mostly fix it on my own cognisance. Then again, the system of the last client was set up to expect issues like this and things which might fall through. This client is a lot more insistent that every little issue be logged. I'm bad at that...

Oh well, colleague is on top of that at least. I guess I'm going to have to get up to speed on what's required to do this, that, and the other…
penaltywaltz: (I'm A Mod)
penaltywaltz ([personal profile] penaltywaltz) wrote in [community profile] wipbigbang2025-05-22 05:13 pm
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WIPBB Big Bang/Reverse Bang 2025 - Check-In #1 Is Live!

Check-In #1 is now live! New to the form (and the ones after this) is an section for letting us know whether you're participating in the Big Bang or the Reverse Bang. Please fill out the form for each project you are doing, with one form response for each project. You have until June 5th to fill it out!

https://forms.gle/rbt8zKvBi1PNbict6
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lettersmod ([personal profile] lettersmod) wrote in [community profile] unsent_letters_exchange2025-05-22 07:59 pm
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Creator Reveals

Gift creators for Unsent Letters 2025 have been revealed! Thank you to all participants and pinch hitters, and I hope you enjoyed the exchange. The collection will remain open indefinitely for treating.
tielan: (you broke it!)
tielan ([personal profile] tielan) wrote2025-05-22 09:20 pm

it will be nice to be home again

I'm mostly just tired. And the bed is doing my back in. Soft beds do this a lot with me. They need to be just soft enough that I can lie on them, but firm and flat - no dips in the mattress.

I want my cats. And my house. And my bed. And my space. I want to work from my office desk instead of commuting. (Okay, the commuting might be required going forward.)

I have met some excellent people while on this work trip, but also I am tired and I want to be in spaces which are mine.
longficmod: Photo of a woman tying a running shoe (Default)
longficmod ([personal profile] longficmod) wrote in [community profile] fandom5k2025-05-21 10:00 pm
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Pinch Hits (3 new)

Updated pinch hits here! Thanks very much to everyone who has claimed one. If you can claim one of these, please comment with your AO3 name and the number of the pinch hit you want. All comments are screened.

Like main assignments, these pinch hits are due on 28 June, and they require a check-in during the week of 7-14 June.

You may ask to exchange your assignment for an open pinch hit. If you are given that pinch hit and fulfill it, this won't count as a default. Please tell me in your comment requesting a pinch hit if you are asking to swap.


PH 2 - Blue Lock (Manga), 終わりのセラフ | Owari no Seraph | Seraph of the End (Anime & Manga), Fairy Tail )

PH 5 - Temeraire - Naomi Novik, The Inheritance Cycle - Christopher Paolini, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman )

PH 7 - Dial M for Murder (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), Dial M for Murder - Hatcher )

PH 8 - Path of Night (Podcast), Vampire: The Masquerade - Various Authors (Choice of Games), Vampire: The Masquerade Port Saga (Podcast) )

PH 9 - 終わりのセラフ | Owari no Seraph | Seraph of the End (Anime & Manga), Blue Lock (Manga), Fairy Tail )

CLAIMED - PH 10 - Doctor Who (1963), Dragon Age (Video Games), This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone )

PH 13 - The Elementalists (Visual Novel), Heart of Battle - Fay Ikin, Royal Affairs - Harris-Powell-Smith )

PH 15 - Code Vein (Video Game), 神さまのいない日曜日 | Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi | Sunday Without God (Anime & Manga), Octopath Traveler II (Video Game), 刀使ノ巫女 | Toji no Miko | Katana Maidens (Anime), よるのないくに | Yoru no Nai Kuni | Nights of Azure (Video Games), Xenoblade Chronicles (Video Game) )

PH 17 - Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), The Godfather (1972 1974 1990) )

PH 18 - Ancient History RPF, Solstice (MoaCube Visual Novel), Crossover Fandom )

PH 19 - Ace Combat (Video Games), Dishonored (Video Games), Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors )

PH 20 - ATEEZ (Band), Blink-182 (Band), Men's Basketball RPF )

CLAIMED - PH 21 - Ranma 1/2, Lost Girl (TV), Star Trek: Lower Decks (Cartoon), Marvel (Comics), 超時空要塞マクロス | Super Dimension Fortress Macross )

CLAIMED - PH 22 - Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (Video Game), The Angel of the Crows - Katherine Addison, Battlestar Galactica (2003), Babylon 5 (TV 1993) )


CLAIMED - PH 23 - Original Work, Crossover Fandom, BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games), The Wheel of Time (TV), Tenet (2020) )

penaltywaltz: (I'm A Mod)
penaltywaltz ([personal profile] penaltywaltz) wrote in [community profile] wipbigbang2025-05-21 11:47 am

WIPBB Big Bang/Reverse Bang 2025 - Sign-Ups Extended For A Week!

So it looks like, between the Tumblr and DW post, that extending the sign-ups would be something y'all want. So the sign-ups are now officially extended to **May 28th**! I'll still be posting the first check-in form tomorrow, and instead of staying open for one week it will stay open for two this round.