An die Frauen der Dienstmägde in Wien

[Vienna], 1802

24 p. | 8vo | A^8 B^4 | 160 x 104 mm

First and only edition of this guide to managing maids in Vienna, unrecorded as best we can tell, and intended for the women who manage them. “I recommend that you take a careful look at the moral behavior of your maids,” is a typical address (p. 4). The author seems rather fond of exclamation points. “Grant it my dearest women! As a worthy housemother, you will not allow your maids to receive secret visits from men” (p. 5). Such morally charged pronouncements certainly capture the tone of the piece. ¶ The focus on maids’ moral probity is indeed thorough. They should go to church and conduct themselves like good Christians (p. 4-5). And yes, of course, keep them away from playful men. Dancing has its benefits, it’s true. “In order to keep your maids in modesty and order,” however, “sternly and emphatically forbid them from ever being visited by a dance master [Tanzmeister]” (p. 7, and this continuing for more than a page). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the author expresses little faith in maids’ ability to hold themselves to such honorable standards. “Since one would often need a hundred eyes to keep careless maids in check, every woman will have enough to do with two eyes to accomplish this” (p. 6). ¶ But it’s not all moral chastising. There's plenty of practical management advice, too. Those managing maids should inquire about their past experience through a trusted source, and not simply rely on a maid’s papers (p. 9). A Sunday afternoon every two weeks should be plenty of time off (p. 11) and maids shouldn't wear flashy clothing (p. 13-14). Don’t hire more maids than you absolutely need and don’t unnecessarily change them (p. 17). The last several pages discuss clothing, shopping for the house, maids’ potential misuse of household resources, and more. And a particularly good piece of advice: “If you are lucky enough to have good maids, make their service as easy and pleasant as possible” (p. 17). It seems like finding good domestic help could indeed be challenging at times. In Edinburgh, for example, half of the servants employed by Lady Grisell Baillie between 1695 and 1704 left after less than a year of service. She later moved to London. “There, in 1715, she engaged eight cooks. One of them stayed for a day, and another left after a single night. A third did look like settling down, but unfortunately, after two months, the constables came and carried her off” (Plant). ¶ An illuminating look at the expected behavior of women in domestic service, and no less at the concerns of those who managed them.

CONDITION: Recent marbled wrappers. Woodcut title vignette and head-piece. ¶ Foxed, and some old adhesive residue at the inner margin of the title, but otherwise perfectly nice.

REFERENCES: Marjorie Plant, “The Servant Problem in Eighteenth Century Scotland,” The Scottish Historical Review 29.108, pt. 2 (Oct 1950), p. 143; Heide Wunder (Thomas Dunlap, tr.), He Is the Sun, She Is the Moon: Women in Early Modern Germany (Harvard, 1998), p. 140 (“Maids were integrated into a household through their status as domestics, and the housefather and housemother watched over their work as well as their moral conduct”)

Item #632