A maid , housemaid , or maidservant is a female domestic worker . In the Victorian era , domestic service was the second-largest category of employment in England and Wales, after agricultural work. In developed Western nations, full-time maids are now typically only found in the wealthiest households. In other parts of the world (mainly within the continent of Asia), maids remain common in urban middle-class households.
23-464: A handmaiden (nowadays less commonly handmaid or maidservant ) is a personal maid or female servant . (The term is also used metaphorically for something whose primary role is to serve or assist.) Depending on culture or historical period, a handmaiden may be of enslaved status or may be simply an employee. The terms handmaiden and handmaid are synonyms. In the King James translation of
46-410: A manor house since time immemorial , originally home of the lord of the manor and sometimes referred to as "the big house", not all would have anything as lavish as a traditional English country house , one of the traditional markers of an established "county" family that derived at least a part of its income from landed property . Stately homes , even rarer and more expensive, were associated with
69-657: A domestic helper in China, and occasionally provides personalized childcare. In some areas in the region, the word "maid" is avoided. This is most likely due to the fact that it sounds like a racially derogatory term in Afrikaans . Maids in South Africa were referred to as domestic servants and they included men, women, and children. They were subject to low wages, lack of a social life, unfavorable working conditions, and even unaccommodating work hours. The Afrikaans word for
92-565: A large household are: In more modest households, a single maid-of-all-work or skivvy was often the only staff. It is possible this word originates from the Italian for slave (" schiavo "—"owned person"). One of the most in-depth and enduring representations of the lives of several types of maid was seen in the 1970s television drama Upstairs, Downstairs , set in England between 1903 and 1936. The lives of maids were well represented in
115-428: A mite (small arachnid) has been used demeaningly to refer to women of colour. The English word for a friend, "mate", is also avoided for this reason. Maids traditionally have a fixed position in the hierarchy of the large households, and although there is overlap between definitions (dependent on the size of the household) the positions themselves would typically be rigidly adhered to. The usual classifications of maid in
138-419: A requirement of domestic service. Nonetheless, the work of a maid has always been hard, involving a full day, and extensive duties. Maids would be familiar with hard work and typically worked long hours in a week. Maids were once part of an elaborate hierarchy in great houses , where the retinue of servants stretched up to the housekeeper and butler, responsible for female and male employees respectively. It
161-569: A young one, or specifically a virgin . These meanings lived on in English until recent times (and are still familiar from literature and folk music), alongside the sense of the word as a type of servant. Maids perform typical domestic chores such as laundry , ironing , cleaning the house, grocery shopping, cooking , and caring for household pets. They may also take care of children , although there are more specific occupations for this, such as nanny . In some poor countries, maids take care of
184-642: Is a large house or mansion with luxurious appointments and great retinues of indoor and outdoor staff. The term is used mainly historically, especially of properties at the turn of the 20th century, i.e., the late Victorian or Edwardian era in the United Kingdom and the Gilded Age in the United States. There is no precise definition of "great house", and the understanding varies among countries. In England, while most villages would have had
207-416: Is that the family occupying the great house were outnumbered, often greatly so, by their staff. There was often an elaborate hierarchy among domestic workers , probably most familiar to people today through television dramas such as Downton Abbey . As in the past, today's great houses are limited to heads of state , the very rich, or those who have inherited them; few in the developed world are staffed at
230-664: The Downton Abbey series, set in England between 1912 and 1926 and shown from 2010 onward. The American television drama The Gilded Age , set in the 1880s in New York City , depicts the lives of maids living and working in the great houses of the era . The main characters in the NAMIC Vision Award -nominated television series Devious Maids are four housemaids. Great house A great house
253-542: The Hebrew Bible , the term handmaid is applied to a female servant who serves her mistress, as in the case of Hagar being described as Sarah 's handmaid, Zilpah being Leah 's handmaid and Bilhah as Rachel 's handmaid. In each of these cases, the mistress "gave" their handmaid to their husbands "to wife", to bear his "seed" (children). The use in the Torah of the prefix "to", as in "gave to wife", may indicate that
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#1732765092444276-502: The domestic robot remains an emerging technology , advances in artificial intelligence have enabled robots to perform domestic work. In less developed nations, various factors ensure a labour source for domestic work: very large differences in the income of urban and rural households, widespread poverty, fewer educated women , and limited opportunities for the employment of less educated women. Legislation in many countries makes certain living conditions, working hours, or minimum wage
299-502: The family seat . In Ireland, the term big house is usual for the houses of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy . In the United States, great houses can be found on streets known informally as " millionaires' mile " (or "row") in certain cities. In Jamaica, "great house" is the standard term for the house at the centre of plantation life, what in the United States is called a plantation house . One commonality between countries
322-499: The peerage , not the gentry . Many mansions were demolished in the 20th century , since families that had previously split their time between their country house and their town house found the maintenance of both too expensive. Many properties are now open to the public as historic house museums , either run by their ancestral owners on a commercial basis, or having been given to English Heritage or similar organisations. Others operate as hotels and wedding venues. Some still serve as
345-412: The duties of management between them. The head of the household is not the butler, but the house manager. An estate manager administers more than one property, and usually has financial and managerial background. Practices vary depending on the size of the household and the preference of the employers, but in general the staff is divided into departments run by the following staff: Sources: For
368-470: The elderly and people with disabilities. Many maids are required by their employers to wear a uniform . In the contemporary Western world , comparatively few households can afford live-in domestic help, usually relying on cleaners , employed directly or through an agency ( maid service ). Many services historically provided by maids have been substituted with IoT devices coordinating with autonomous robots . For example: Amazon Dash and Roomba . While
391-591: The end of the nineteenth century, there was a decline in the want for maids and other servants entirely, which has led to today when the majority of people don’t have maids. Today, foreign women are employed in Saudi Arabia , Kuwait , Qatar , Singapore , Hong Kong , Japan and United Arab Emirates in large numbers to work as maids or other roles of domestic service, and are often vulnerable to multiple forms of abuse. An ayi ( aunt in Mandarin) works as
414-480: The level of past centuries. Nowadays, the International Guild of Butlers estimates that the annual salaries of a 20–25 person household staff total in excess of US$ 1,000,000. On large estates or in families with more than one residence, there may be a steward (or the modern equivalent, an estate manager) who oversees direction of the entire establishment. Today, it is not uncommon for a couple to split
437-486: The maid of all work, often known colloquially as "the girl". Historically, many maids suffered from prepatellar bursitis , an inflammation of the prepatellar bursa caused by long periods spent on the knees for purposes of scrubbing and fire-lighting, leading to the condition attracting the colloquial name of "housemaid's knee". As the end of the nineteenth century neared, the relationship between employer and servant grew more and more distant and they were less loyal. At
460-694: The mother of Jesus is referred to as the "handmaid of the Lord" or "servant of the Lord", both of which are titles of honour for the mother of Jesus . The Gospel of Luke describes Mary as the "handmaid of the Lord" ( Greek δούλη , doulē ) when she gives her consent to the message of the Angel (see Luke 1:38 ), and when she proclaims the greatness of the Lord because of "the great things" he has worked in her (see Luke 1:49 )." Maid Maid in Middle English meant an unmarried woman, especially
483-435: The rest of the house. Some households employed maids-of-all-work as young as twelve in the 19th century in England and they often worked from five in the morning until late in the evening on a wage of £6 to £9 per year. They had no free time and typically only had one or two days off in a month. In Victorian England, all middle-class families would have "help", but for most small households, this would be only one employee,
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#1732765092444506-468: The wife is a concubine or inferior wife. The text repeats that these people remain handmaids of their mistress though they are also the concubine of the mistress's husband. They are referred to interchangeably by the Hebrew terms אָמָה ( ’āmāh ) and שִׁפְחָה ( šip̄ḥāh ). Other modern English bible translations use the word slave, slave-girl or servant. In Christianity , Mary,
529-433: Was the best and most common way that women could earn money, especially lower class women. The word "maid" itself means an unmarried young woman or virgin. Domestic workers, particularly those low in the hierarchy, such as maids and footmen , were expected to remain unmarried while in service. They had their own section of rooms in the house, though they were far away from the other rooms and weren’t anywhere near as nice as
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