Gender, Space, and Place: The Experience of Service in the Early Modern English Household c.1580?1720

The boundary between home and work was very blurred in early modern England. Domestic production was an essential element of early modern life and many families had servants and apprentices living and working with them under the same roof. But, to date, little investigation has been conducted into the impact that these practices had on the character of domestic space and how experience varied between different household members. This article attempts to redress the balance by focusing on the ways in which early modern middling householders organized eating and sleeping in the spaces that they shared with their servants. It argues that fixed social patterns were not inscribed upon early modern homes. Rooms were multifunctional; their use and meaning constantly shifted. Moreover, lack of space in most households meant that separation or segregation according to rank or gender was not possible or practical. Nonetheless, the organization of space for these everyday activities played an important role in the expression of the social, age, and gender hierarchies that ordered the early modern domestic world.