ABSTRACT
The bewitched singing and dancing dishes in Disney's 1991 animated film Beauty and the Beast are 'obsessed' with serving Belle, their master's beautiful prisoner. Having been turned into flatware, candlesticks, and teapots by a vindictive witch a decade before, these former servants have lost their purpose in life without someone to wait upon. The 'good old days' of masters and servants vanished with Victoria's reign, but the presence of servants in popular culture has not. In addition to successful films like The Remains of the Day and Gosford Park, both of which focus on life 'below stairs'. In England, there was recently a reality television show called Masters and Servants. Edgeworth and Gaskell understood that even the private acts of dying and grieving were mediated through servants who managed the death of their employers just as they managed their lives.
