ABSTRACT
The idyll of the spinster Susan Hopley, residing in peace and serenity by the fi reside, would prove short-lived. Over the next ten years fi ction would explore the increasingly complex impact of literate servants upon familial culture and the consequences of literacy’s contribution towards the embourgeoisement of the serving classes.1 By 1859, an anonymous scribe of the Edinburgh Review had perceptively recognized this process as contingent upon celibacy and cultural assimilation.
