Mrs. Woolf and the Servants
An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury
By Alison Light
September 2008
$30.00
400 pp
6.125 x 9.25 in
Hardcover
By Alison Light
A revealing new "Upstairs Downstairs" perspective on the Bloomsbury set and the servants who shared their lives.
When Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One's Own in 1929, she cemented her reputation as a feminist, a woman who could imagine a more open and liberal reality, and an advocate for the female voice. Indeed the whole of the Bloomsbury set was defined by similarly tolerant, open-minded, and often Bohemian sensibilities; they were universally considered ahead of their time. But as with all idealists, sometimes reality can't help but fall short of the dream. Like thousands of other British households, Virginia Woolf's relied on live-in domestics for the most intimate of daily tasks. That room of her own she so valued was cleaned, heated, and supplied with meals by a series of cooks and maids throughout her childhood and adult life.
Woolf by turns loathed and pitied her servants, resenting her dependence upon them and the hypocrisy their presence forced her to face. But she also felt deep affection for servants like Sophie and Nellie, who spent decades weathering the storms of Woolf's crippling depression. In fact, Woolf herself wrote that if she were reading her own diary she would "seize on the portrait of Nelly [sic]… and make the whole story revolve around that." Alison Light has done just that.
Despite the liberal outlook of the Bloomsbury set, and their conscious efforts to leave their Victorian upbringings behind, their homes were still divided into worlds of "us" and "them." Alison Light writes with insight and charm about this fraught and overlooked side of Bloomsbury life.
Reviews for Mrs. Woolf and the Servants:
“Light has illuminated Woolf's upstairs-downstairs life in a manner intended to exemplify the broader socioeconomic shifts of the first third of the 20th century, deftly spanning the intimate, the socio-historical and the literary. The result is an absorbing and complex portrait of Woolf's particular relation to domestics and domesticity, but also an analysis of the shifting mores of the period.”—Claire Messud, The New York Times Book Review Read full review.
“Do we really need another book on Bloomsbury? The answer is, resoundingly, yes. Especially "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants." Light doesn't take away from Bloomsbury's legacy. She adds the dignity and intelligence of the people who made all those conversations, all those books possible.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Read full review.
"superbly researched, often passionately eloquent, and enthralling throughout.."—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Read full review.
More rave reviews for a new take on Virginia Woolf and her circle in Mrs. Woolf and The Servants, from the New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe. Additionally, Anna Mundow from Sunday's Boston Globe recently did a great Q&A with Alison Light.
“A brilliant new book probes the intimate, unequal relationship between Virginia Woolf and the woman who cared for her.”—Mona Simpson, The Atlantic. Read full review.
“Historian Alison Light's fascinating "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury" does something that by all rights should be impossible: The book finds a fresh angle on a life so well-documented it should by all rights be threadbare. Light writes with sympathy and insight, blowing away the cobwebs of a way of life now gone.”—Moira Macdonald, The Seattle Times Read full review.
“Eye-opening… Light enriches the history of Bloomsbury by adding to it the stories of Nellie, Lottie and the other women and men whose manual labor sustained it.” —Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune Read full review.
“Ms Light has done an excellent job of weaving together social history and literary criticism. Her book not only gives voice to previously silent subjects but also adds to our understanding of both Woolf and Bell, of whom it is sometimes easy to feel one has heard quite enough already.”—The Economist
“A mix of social history, biography and literary criticism, Alison Light takes a sustained look at these servants and their relationships with their artistic, semibohemian, upper-middle-class employers. Light digs deeper into Woolf's experience with servants and pieces together the servants' stories--a method that allows her to examine, from fresh angles, the institution of domestic servitude. An absorbing collective history of servants in Britain.”—Elaine Blair, The Nation. Read full review .
“An authoritative, detailed account of the dynamic relationship between Virginia Woolf and the domestic help that was so crucial to her existence as a woman and a writer. Alison Light is clear-eyed and wise about her chosen topic. She has not only done her research, but brings to her task some unique advantages: Her grandmother was in domestic service. And indeed a particular feature of "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants" is its emphasis on the humanity of these women. Although well-versed in and informed by the sociological background, Ms. Light is careful to present rounded portraits of these people who played such an important role in the Woolf household.”—Martin Rubin, The Washington Times
“[Light's] analyses of both the Bloomsbury notables and the servant class of their time are deft and engrossing.” —Publishers Weekly
“The complex, interwoven stories of Woolf and Sophie, Nellie, Lottie, Louie, and many other distinct personalities remain at the heart of this meticulously researched and elegant exploration.”—Booklist
“Light's research is thorough and she does a good job of joining social history to Woolf's particular story.”— Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor
"Light's historical contextualizing of the Woolfs' household management, and the brilliant sleuthing she has done to reconstruct their servants' lives, is a remarkable achievement ...this is a bold, impressive and important rewriting of a slice of British social history." —Hermione Lee in The Guardian
"The historian offers us an invaluable glimpse into the hidden history of domestic service in an absorbing narrative, beautifully written with the sensibility of a poet."—The Times
"Mrs. Woolf and the Servants goes below stairs with a flashlight and a pail to illuminate the aspects of Bloomsbury living that its denizens preferred to ignore."—The Independent on Sunday
