Goal: 75 books this year
#61 - Life as a Victorian Lady by Pamela Horn
#62 - Life in a Victorian Household by Pamela Horn
I'm fascinated by the Victorian era, so I was eager to read these books; they were 99 cent downloads on my Kindle.
Life as a Victorian Lady depicts the various stages of girls growing up in England in the middle to late 1800s. Because of the laws of primogeniture, girls were practically compelled to make advantageous marriages whether there was any love involved or not. She who did not ended up dependent on her father until his death, when she would then become dependent on her father's heir, who may or may not be a loving brother, happy to support an unmarried sister. Those who married became responsible for ordering their own houses, dealing with servants, entertaining their husbands' friends and business associates, many times having to deal with their mothers-in-law who might not be ready to give up their positions as queen bee. They had little to do with their children, either by choice or circumstance. Divorce was unheard of, and in the rare circumstances when a divorce was granted, the wife was completely shunned by Society, while the husband suffered no consequences.
Life in a Victorian Household covers the inhabitants on the other side of the green baize door - the servants. Poor children of the Victorian era had no opportunity to get an education, so when they were sent out to earn money to support themselves or to help support their families, their only option for legitimate employment was service. Sleeping in unheated attics or basements, eating whatever might be left over from the family's meals, many felt that they were fortunate to have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Their training was mostly on-the-job, and it included everything from hauling coal from the basement to carrying hot water up several flight of stairs to fill a bath for the master. There was silver to be polished, tables to be laid, vegetables to be prepared, pots to be scrubbed, bed and table linens to be washed, mended and ironed, fires to be laid, carpets to be swept and stoops to be scrubbed. There was a definite hierarchy, with the butler lording over the master's valet, the footmen, the grooms and the gardeners. The housekeeper was in charge of the upstairs and downstairs maids, the tweeny and sometimes the mistress's lady's maid. The cook had her own little kingdom, ruling the kitchen maids and the bootblack, who did all the odd jobs all the other servants thought they were too high and mighty to do.
Because I read a lot of Victorian mysteries, I knew some of this, but these books really went into a lot of detail that I didn't know. It makes me very glad I didn't live in Victorian England; my family surely wouldn't have been of the servant-hiring class - we would have been the servants!
Queen Colleen
), this is the book for you. 
There are some serious parts of it where she talks about her childhood abuse (among other things), but the majority of the book is a really neat behind-the-scenes look at Little House and her experiences on the show.
