Servants and hands: Representing the working classes in Victorian factory novels

Abstract

EARLY IN Frances Trollope’s 1839 novel The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy, the title character is introduced into the kitchen of Sir Matthew Dowling’s home. The assembled servants, rigidly organized into their own hierarchy of status and position, react with horror and derision at the very idea of a factory boy joining the household on any terms. The only way in which they can explain such a preposterous idea is to speculate that the boy is Sir Matthew’s illegitimate son; only by inventing a hidden genealogy can they imagine a place for a factory worker in the genteel British home (Figure 2).