Domesticity, as defined by The Merriam Webster, is “the state of being domestic; domestic or home life.” When someone mentions domesticity, an immediate association may be drawn to domesticated cats, dogs, or even simply animals people bring into our homes and domesticize. The household trains to be accustomed to home life, rather than life on the streets. We as people, generally, spend half our time in the home and half outside. Thanks to this we are often seen as domesticated creatures. However, as demonstrated clearly by through Dicken’s writing, as well as Cullwick’s, people can also become domesticized. During the Victorian Era, women left home rarely and were not seen as working people. Despite the limited exceptions most working women constrained to work inside homes other than their own. Hannah Cullwick’s relationship to domesticity is a complex one. Despite the fact that she was a working-class woman, who was employed by various different homes, she did not work in each of them for more than a limited amount of time.
Firstly, we should dissect what Hannah’s job was, a maidservant. A maidservant, as defined by The Merriam Webster, is “a female servant.” However, the definition which is much more interesting is the one Google provides, which is “a female domestic servant.” She works within a household to care for the establishment and is a personal servant to her employer. However, most housemaids during this time period were known to work at a specific household for most, if not all, of their employer.
Hannah was a working-class lady, who snatched the consideration of numerous men. She describes several situations in her compositions of how men would request that she kiss them or suggest so through gestures. Some would have the audacity to do so without asking. Every time she was offered, she refused, as she wrote that these men were not worth her time. Only Munby was, which caused her to leave each time this would occur. One of the crucial instances in which this happened was on page 134 when there were a group of people playing a game and the goal was to kiss someone. One gentlemen kissed Hannah, to which she indignantly responded, “I hate anyone to kiss me but Massa.” That sentence speaks for itself especially because stated prior to that it is said “However, for Hannah and many other entirely respectable women, kissing was something to be engaged in as often as possible, was understood to involve nothing more than harmless pleasure.” (page 114)
Before her meeting with Munby, Hannah was working for Lady Boughey at Aqualate Hall, Forton. Working there for eight months she was let go on the grounds that her mistress saw her, as she stated, "playing as we was cleaning our pots." This may have been simply the principal occurrence of when Hannah acknowledged, for herself, that she delighted in house work. The word “playing” may have come from the joy aspect Hannah had as she was cleaning, while she was playing one of the roles a modern-day housewife would have, she did not have the same dependency as they do. There was an appealing element in getting “dirty” for Hannah and working under someone, which brought about why she enjoyed what she did.
Going deeper into the history and mentions of what a handmaid is, Abrahamic texts have a very similar approach to the role the maidservant plays. In the Hebrew Bible, the term handmaid is applied to a female servant who serves her mistress. In some cases mentioned in the text the mistress would “give” their handmaid to their husbands “to wife”, as well to bear his children. Now, while Munby did not have a mistress, there was Lasy Cotes, who took Hannah to London, where she met Munby and sparked a secret relationship. This can also be seen in Christianity, because Mary is referred to as the “handmaid (or servant) of the Lord”. The Gospel of Luke depicts Mary as the handmaid of the Lord “when she gives her consent to the message of the Angel (Luke 1:38), and when she proclaims the greatness of the Lord, because of "the great things" he has worked in her (Luke 1:49)." The submission of the handmaid to the “master” is very common through history.
Munby acted as a catalyst in Hannah’s life, but both of them had something the other wanted. Munby held an attraction to working-class women, predominantly those who did hard physical labor, whereas Hannah saw him as a flawless gentleman, who celebrated the work she did as a maidservant. They can be viewed as a yin yang paring. While the two were very much opposites, they had similar interests and worked together to inevitably have a secret love affair. In Hannah’s case, she submitted in quite a lot of ways and went up against numerous personas while working for Munby, some of those which could be viewed as sinful. Hannah and Munby did not have a binary relationship, but rather a yin yang relationship where they acted as a partnership. The set norm was to marry someone who shared the same social status as you, however you both would stay in your respected parts of society. They did just the opposite, in their affair they both put more of the others life style into theirs. While Hannah became more public, Munby became much more private. This opened the door to both of them submitting to each other in the bedroom and made them be seen as the “other” type of people who lived in the Victorian Era.
Between pages 152-153 an image of Hannah is portrayed as a ‘slave,’ she has a chain with a bolt around her neck, while just Munby having a key. The lock could be seen as an indication of a slave, tying her down to the household, or it could simply mean he had the way to her heart. However, it was likewise a persona she was playing for him. Hannah most likely saw herself as a slave to love. She turned into a ready part player that misbehaved past the common worker. It wasn't run of the mill for a house keeper of-all-work to bathe her lord and let her lord bathe her, which was what Hannah and Arthur did in private. It is likewise intriguing to realize that Hannah washed Arthur's feet with worship, which could be deciphered as symbolizing Christ washing his supporter's feet. This imagery, for Hannah, may have remained for a flawless compassionate Christ-like love, an affection that would cross all classes, all limits, and an unrestricted always sort of adoration. At the point when long hair was viewed as a ladies' grandness, Hannah let Arthur trim hers off, and she dressed like a man to pretend for him. Expecting that ladies did not dress like men within the Victorian era, there might have been some dishonesty to the pretending. We don't know whether Arthur was pulled in to men, however this may have been his method for completing a dream.
Some of Hannah's pictures, which appear in the book, are shown to be somewhat outrageous. Hannah was extremely awkward pretending as a woman, more than any other persona. One of Arthur's obsessions was of Hannah dressing in favor ladylike clothing so he could separate her harsh hard-skinned hands, arms, and face to the delicate white skin of neck, chest and shoulders, which Hannah normally kept secured under her work clothes. A woman in a higher social class would have emphasized these sensitive traits in their dress, not conceal them, as she did. Hannah never felt she had a place in this part, however she didn't have an issue inviting Arthur at various circumstances by taking on the appearance of one. Another extraordinary pretend is Hannah dressed as a fireplace cleaner. Hirelings got filthy in their work and soil didn't trouble Hannah, however it is to a great degree distorted. Throughout the years female hirelings, almost certainly, have begun to look all starry eyed at their lords, yet more than likely they wouldn't have been pretending, and many would have wound up pregnant and expelled from an ace who exploited them.
Hannah can be seen as one of two figures: a maidservant who completely submitted to her master’s orders or as a masculine woman who sought self-fulfillment. Separate sphere ideology can very much be connected to this; what separate spheres are is that they are the domestic spheres that separate men and women. Men inhabit the public sphere, whereas women inhabit the private sphere, or sometimes referred to as the “proper sphere.” Hannah falls under a third sphere, I will refer to it as “Hannah’s Sphere.” Hannah’s Sphere, is different, whereas like the public sphere it is masculine, has conflict, and physical work; but like the “proper sphere” it is also feminine, consists of housework, and compassion. It is to say that in a binary society, such as Victorian England and even today, everyone placed themselves in one of the two, but Hannah did not care for that, she did as she pleased for her own self and was viewed as independent.
Hannah having the characteristics of “Hannah’s Sphere” is what defined her version of domesticity. She was not a house-wife figure nor was she just a household servant, but much more of a guilty pleasure in the Munby household. It was taboo for Hannah to live the way she did with Munby, which made it all the more pleasurable for them. It was the act of going past what was viewed as “proper,” and both Hannah and Munby knew that if it were to get out it would be extremely scandalous. Although the taboo aspect of it all made it more adventurous and the fact that they already went past the boundary of servant and master meant that their relationship had no more limitations. This went to the point where Munby controlled what Hannah would do at certain points of the day.
Certain details in the diary was written at the order of Mundy, it is seen through her writing style that she did not write it for herself, but rather for someone else. When she half-heartedly entered marriage with Munby, and was viewed as the definition of a domesticated person she was not happy. This action was surprisingly contradictory, because Hannah could not depend on someone they way marriage confided her, leaving her to be unsatisfied. In marriage she was dependent on Munby and grew bored without independency. She rarely played the role of his wife, which comes off very interesting because after taking the biggest leap in their relationship, it had begun to die. When they moved to Central London, she remained as his servant. She did not allow for them to share money and insisted that Munby remain to pay her, and that she had her own financial savings. This kept her independency intact to a degree for she did not want to be given everything at the hand. They both left each other several times, however she left him much more frequently, until she inevitably returned to domestic work for she could not live in such a domesticated style.
All in all, domesticity in Hannah’s life was very prominent, but it manifested inside of a very gray area of whether it could truly be considered in the home. Hannah spent her time as she liked, while she did have a job to do, she enjoyed what she did to the degree that she was being her own person. She was not viewed as the ideal woman, instead she was viewed as a woman in a lower class who was not as respected, due of her social status. Entering her working life was what defined her, she was no longer dependent of anyone, but this also lead her to live a “domesticated lie”. It is to say Hannah did not live a perfect life of someone living in the Victorian Era, however she did not allow the binary ideology of society to define how she acted and what she did.