"The Corset Diaries" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAlister Katie)

Downstairs Is a Much Different World



But what if you weren’t born with the proverbial silver spoon in your mouth? What if you were one of the 1.5 million people in service in September 1879? Would you be able to accept life dominated by the complicated hierarchy and rules servants had to follow, not to mention working without modern devices? We’ll join sixteen volunteers who come to Worston Old Hall with no experience of what it means to be a servant. Only the cook and coachman have actual working knowledge of what it takes to fill their jobs. Join Palmer the butler and Mrs. Peters the housekeeper as they struggle with the responsibility of turning the nine lower servants from modern, twenty-first-century volunteers into a team who work with Victorian precision and efficiency.




I couldn’t help but wonder if I would be on the plane at that moment if the job I had been offered was that of scullery maid. . . . Well, that didn’t take long to ponder. For ten thousand dollars, yes, I’d wash dishes for a month.




No Mobile Phones, No Toothpaste




(No toothpaste? GAH!)




For four weeks the entire household, from duke to scullery maid, will function just as houses of the nobility did in 1879. Each volunteer has foresworn modern machines and technology, agreeing instead to adhere steadfastly to Victorian standards of behavior, following with strict obedience the rules and manners of the time.




OK, so that meant what? No smoking if you were a woman, chaperones for unmarried women, couldn’t mention anything remotely approaching a sexual subject without couching it in terms so obtuse that no one really knew what you were talking about, smelling salts and fans, and . . . Oh, those poor people playing the servants! From what I could recall reading about the Victorians, they really had a hard time. Oy. Maybe it’s a good thing they needed an American to be the duchess . . . that’s assuming I get the job, which I won’t once Roger sees me.

Maybe if I slipped Bob the pilot a plaintive note and twenty bucks he’d stop in Ireland so I could sneak off?




Everyone in Their Places,

and a Place for Everything



Toughest of all the rules for our brave volunteers downstairs will be the detailed and intricate hierarchy that governs the servants. How will our free-willed volunteers cope with being told who can speak and when, who must defer to whom, and how they must interact with the family above stairs? Most importantly, how will they deal with their loss of freedom?