This post about employer/servant relationships that @bethanydelleman and @thatscarletflycatcher have both reblogged has gotten me thinking about all the employer/servant relationships that are close and familial in period fiction I know. From Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights (although she's a complex example), to the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, to Suzuki in Madame Butterfly, to the Enchanted Objects in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and others. Are they all classist nonsense, glorifying loyalty, affection, and emotional labor that no real-life employee owes their employers? Or not?
I'm especially wondering about this because in one of the fantasy stories I'm working on, as I've envisioned it until now, a neglected child from a well-off family ends up forming a found family with several servants from her household. After years of trying to maintain a formal distance, they finally can't deny their affection for her, and end up following her when she runs away from home and starting a new life elsewhere as her parental figures. I suppose I can try to find ways to justify these specific relationships in this story – especially because once this girl and these adults are living on their own, they no longer have a mistress/servant relationship. But can I do this, or would it just be perpetuating the oppressive sentimental cliché that servants should be their employers' friends/surrogate family and be willing to sacrifice everything for them?
At any rate, though, I agree with @thatscarletflycatcher that this way of thinking is probably why some people are so eager to hate Nelly Dean, and why her relationship with the elder Cathy tends to be rewritten as more loving in adaptations. Subconsciously they probably think "How dare a maid dislike her mistress? The heroine's female servant confidante is supposed to love her!" Even though Nelly fulfills that "duty" by loving the younger Cathy in the second half, and the elder Cathy's status as a "heroine" is questionable. There's probably also an element of this when people criticize Jane Eyre for at least initially being too cold toward Adéle. Jane is hired to teach Adéle, yet people criticize her for acting like a teacher instead of a mother; they seem to expect every governess to be like Maria in The Sound of Music and become a doting mother figure to her students, when there's no rational reason to expect that of a paid employee.
I was forced to file a civil rights complaint against a former employer, a nonprofit which is still being lead by the same woman. I filed because I had no job after returning from my unpaid maternity leave, in a pandemic, with no former warning. This same woman and organization worked against my claim despite being a community leader in equity and safety for women. It was one of the toughest times of my life. Not only was I postpartum and healing physically, but my newborn was unable to be vaccinated from COVID. I was homebound and unemployed. The lack of empathy or understanding from other employees is something I will never forget...it was the darkest side of humanity I've ever seen. While I was 31 weeks pregnant and fearing COVID spread, my employer refused to take my concerns of meeting with the public seriously. She considered my request for flexible accommodations to not include limited public facing activities. Better protections are more than necessary...especially now.
“If a woman requests a stool to sit on or bathroom breaks, or a water bottle, even accommodations that are that simple, that basic and the subject of so much consensus — employers don’t have to provide those right now,” Casey said in an interview after the vote.
Many women continue working in physically demanding and often low-wage jobs throughout their pregnancies. The legislation would help ensure they had sufficient break time, easy access to water, lifting restrictions if needed, and other sensible protections.
Companies shouldn't be allowed to blacklist an employee from applying at another location after quitting without notice unless they, themselves, offer employees a two-weeks termination notice.