Manor House Paper
Manor House is a TV show about 12 people in real life, who choose to live in a manor house and live as a servants like the people in the Edwardian time period. These people choose to go three months away from their jobs and without all the luxuries of modern life. In Manor House there many servants, but there is also the family that runs and lives on the estate. This family on the show is the Olliff-Cooper family. Sir John is the Master of the House; it is his job to keep the estates up and running. Lady Olliff-Cooper is the Lady of the House.
Her duty is to make sure that when there is a banquet everybody is sitting in the right order. Mister Jonathan and Master Guy are the two sons of the family. The last of the family is Miss Anson she is Lady Olliff-Cooper’s sister. Miss Anson is unmarried, so she is living with her sister. After the family, the order of servants goes from highest rank, which is the butler, to the lowest rank of servant, which is the scullery maid. Mister Edgar is the butler. It is the butler’s job to keep the servants separate from the family and to keep the servants in order.
Mrs. Davies is the housekeeper; her job is to make sure the female servants and male servants stay separate and that everybody is working as they should. Monsieur Dubiard is the chef, and his job is pretty obvious: to order, prepare and cook to the food for the family. The last upper servant is the lady’s maid, Miss Morrison. Her job is to prepare, the lady’s hair and clothes, and it is also her unspoken duty to gossip with her Lady about the lower servants. The highest lower servant is Charlie, the first footman.
His duty is to serve Sir John and to dress him as well, but mostly his job is to be the butler’s right-hand man. Rob’s job as the Second Footman is to keep an eye on Master Guy, and that often means playing with him. Also his job is to get up early in the morning and dump everybody’s chamber pots. Rebecca is the first housemaid and Jessica is the second housemaid, and there is not much of a difference between the two housemaids, but mostly just the pay and what time one wakes up is different. Antonia is the kitchen maid, and her job is simple: to do whatever the chef tells her to do.
Kenny is the hallboy. He is the lowest of the male servants, and his job is to do all the dirty jobs that anybody and everybody tells him to do. The lowest female servant rank is the scullery maid. Her job is basically to stay in the kitchen washing dishes all day long and in the show they cannot seem to keep a scullery maid. Kelly was the first scullery maid, but left after only two days. After her was Lucy the second scullery maid. She lasted longer than Kelly with a whole of a couple of weeks, but she couldn’t last the full three months.
A major difficulty in this setting and time period is the lack of freedom. The servants were completely at the mercy of the masters, and if the family was unhappy with anything that a servant did, such as speaking to the family, they could be dismissed at any time. The servants had time off was when everything was done, but like on the show the work is never done. If the work is never done, then people get overworked, leading to everybody being worn out. Being worn out had more than one disadvantage.
One of the disadvantages is the fact that the servants can’t do their work to the best of their abilities. Another disadvantage is that people’s tempers are very short meaning they are more likely to speak against or in front of the family leading to their possible dismissal. What is worse than not having any rights is that back then men and women were unequal. The women were taken advantage of more often than not and they could do nothing about it, especially if it was the master. If there was a choice between a guy and a girl, they would choose the guy.
The men would always get paid more than the women. And the worst part of this would be not be being able to fight this rule, or in that time period it might as well have been a law. The servants did not get paid very much and they were expected to just accept it because they were being given food and housing, so in reality they were little better than slaves. The only servant that was really treated well by everybody was the chef; he could leave the family at any time because a high-class chef was in high demand
The rules in the Edwardian time period were very strict. The female servants and the male servants were never to be engaged in anything romantic. To help with keeping the servants separate, the manor house was set up with the females living on the complete opposite side of the house as the males. Another rule was that if the family were walking down the stairs, the servants were to make themselves as invisible as possible, such as going into a corner facing the walls to make sure that they never made eye contact.
Another rule is that the servants, except the butler and the lady’s maid, were never to speak in front of the masters. That rule is very important to them, and if a servant breaks it the consequence was often dismissal from the manor. Overall I think it would have been an interesting experience, and I most likely would have jumped at the chance if they had offered it to me. But I know for certain that would not have wanted to live during that time period! I would hate having to deal with all of those rules.
