French History Advance Access originally published online on July 7, 2008
French History 2008 22(3):316-336; doi:10.1093/fh/crn028
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A ‘theatre of rule’? Domestic service in aristocratic households under the Third Republic
* The author is a lecturer in European history at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. She may be contacted at e.macknight{at}abdn.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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E. P. Thompson developed the notion of ‘cultural hegemony’ to analyse the power of the ruling class over the working class in eighteenth-century England. This article examines the aristocracy's endeavour to maintain its cultural hegemony in the France of the Third Republic. Drawing on the private archives of noble families, it documents servants’ roles in supporting the ‘conspicuous consumption’ of their employers, the hierarchy and wages of male and female servants and the language and gestures used in employer–servant interaction. It then looks at working-class responses to nobles’ hegemonic ritual of hunting and concludes with discussion of the post-war socio-economic climate in which the distinctive features of domestic service in aristocratic households were gradually abandoned.