It was not uncommon for servants to be viewed with distance, even scorn by the people who employed them.
One housemaid was ordered to weigh the dirt after sweeping—as if to provide material proof to justify her efforts.
Another reported routinely missing meals while rushing endlessly up and down the stairs in an effort to serve multiple courses to her employers, (thus ensuring that the meals stayed hot).
As late as 1937, a chambermaid described her situation as untenable, and the expectations of service as extreme.
Describing the family who hired her, she wrote:
They were in need of a strong young fool, a creature that would run on very little fuel and would not question her lot.
Harriet Prescott Spofford, a noted Victorian novelist and social critic, actually did question their lot.
Why is it, she asked, that those who did the hardest work slept in the hardest beds?