“In the Posture of Children”

This chapter is about the rhetorical effects of writing about domestic servants as if they were children, effects that shape representations of both servants and children as pedagogical subjects within the domestic sphere. Eighteenth-century British domestic servants spanned a broad range of ages including many whom we would join in characterizing as “children,” and many whom we would not. Many children entered service through the institution of apprenticeship and remained in service as adults. As Bridget Hill has argued, domestic service became, increasingly over the course of the century, more a lifetime vocation and less the temporary role of the older child or adolescent. ¹ Domestic servants, young and old, straddle the public and domestic spheres as objects of discipline in both realms, sharing with many of their counterparts among the working poor subjection to the public discipline of an emergent, modern criminal justice system and subjection to—as well as the benefits of—philanthropic and educational institutions such as the Charity school movement. What distinguishes the subjection of servants from that of other, predominantly poor people is their particular relation to the family. Throughout the eighteenth century, domestic servants were represented as analogous to children; in Defoe's words, servants were thought of in “the Posture of Children,” ² a position that naturalized their subordination within the family hierarchy and erased the problem of differing economic interests between master and servant. It also helped to create and sustain a concept of the family as a powerful means of regulating the agency of adult servants and children of both classes within it.