Chapter 1 - The Household: Size, Gender, and Recruitment

Summary

In order to situate the women who worked in royal and aristocratic households in their proper context, the first chapter explores household composition, demonstrating similarities of servant arrangements at all levels of elite society even though household size varied at different status gradations. Over time, households of every status level grew, offering further career opportunities, especially since elite households became more welcoming to women in the late fourteenth century, even though throughout the Middle Ages they remained almost exclusively male domains. This chapter argues that female servants gained their positions through kinship and patronage opportunities that favored their placement and promotion. In investigating the qualities that employers desired in their servants, I contend that they chose attendants who demonstrated useful skills, good character, and pleasing appearance. This chapter reveals that turnover occurred due to death, retirement, marriage (which did not necessitate retirement), dismissal, or transition to different households, and seems to have been a frequent aspect of life for a lady-in-waiting, yet I also assert that a minority of attendants served their ladies for long durations, at least a decade or more.