While “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” is primarily the story of the disintegration of a marriage, it is also a story about class and what servants owed their masters in the rigid social hierarchy of the Victorian era. The pull of class as a social force is evident from the beginning of the story: Hartley, the lady’s maid who narrates the story, is forced to take work at the gloomy, remote Brympton house because, due to her recent bout with typhoid, no other employers will take her on. Once Hartley arrives at the house, she finds that the servants are bullied and harassed by Mr. Brympton—as the tendency of the soft-spoken butler, Mr. Wace, to quote “dreadful texts full of brimstone” whenever Mr. Brympton is at home indicates. Hartley sees firsthand her objectified status when she finds Mr. Brympton appraising her looks before deciding that she is “not the kind of morsel” he is looking for. On the whole, the story makes it clear that the world belongs to people like the Brymptons and that they can do whatever they like with their servants, even if, like Mr. Brympton, they are cruel and uncouth. The only power Hartley and the other servants have is to leave and find a new place to work, where they could be subject to the same treatment. However, befitting the upper-class status of its author, the story refrains from a full-throated denunciation of this rigid class structure: it is, after all, Emma Saxon’s loyalty to Mrs. Brympton that causes her to return as a ghost and to try to save her former mistress. In this way, the story suggests that even the most rigid, exploitative class structures can perhaps be redeemed, or at least mitigated, by affection and loyalty.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Class and Hierarchy ThemeTracker
Class and Hierarchy Quotes in The Lady Maid’s Bell
Most of my money was gone, and after I’d boarded for two months, hanging about the employment agencies, and answering any advertisement that looked any way respectable, I pretty nearly lost heart, for fretting hadn’t made me fatter, and I didn’t see why my luck should ever turn. It did though—or so I thought at the time.
My niece is an angel. Her former maid, who died last spring, had been with her twenty years and worshipped the ground she walked on. She’s a kind mistress to all, and where the mistress is kind, as you know, the servants are usually good-humoured, so you’ll probably get on well enough with the rest of the household. And you’re the very woman I want for my niece: quiet, well-mannered, and educated above your station.
Mrs. Brympton was lying down in her bedroom. Her lounge stood near the fire and beside it was a shaded lamp. She was a delicate-looking lady, but when she smiled I felt there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. She spoke very pleasantly, in a low voice, asking me my name and age and so on, and if I had everything I wanted, and if I wasn’t afraid of feeling lonely in the country.
“Not with you I wouldn’t be, madam,” I said, and the words surprised me when I’d spoken them, for I’m not an impulsive person; but it was just as if I’d thought aloud.
About seven, Agnes called me to my mistress’s room; and there I found Mr. Brympton. He was standing on the hearth; a big fair bull-necked man, with a red face and little bad-tempered blue eyes: the kind of man a young simpleton might have thought handsome, and would have like to pay dear for thinking it.
He swung about when I came in, and looked me over in a trice. I knew that the look meant, from having experienced it once or twice in my former places. Then he turned his back on me, and went on talking to his wife; and I knew what that meant too. I was not the kind of morsel he was after.
In a minute or two he went off, and left my mistress to dress for dinner, and I noticed as I waited on her that she was white, and chill to the touch.
Mr. Brympton took himself off the next morning, and the whole house drew a long breath when he drove away. As for my mistress, she put on her hat and furs (for it was a fine winter morning) and went out for a walk in the gardens, coming back quite fresh and rosy.
The rain had begun again, and the drip, drip, drip seemed to be dropping into my brain. I lay awake listening to it, and turning over what my friend in town had said. What puzzled me was that it was always the maids who left...
After a while I slept; but suddenly a loud noise wakened me. My bell had rung.
