I am on a lifelong search for books (and really any media) about how class dynamic shapes interpersonal relationships. So the simplest way to articulate what type of book I am looking for is one that center’s a servant as a main protagonist and examines class power. But if it were that simple, I wouldn’t feel the need to write my first post. So to give you a better sense of what kind of book I am looking for here are some parameters, books/films/plays that have effectively scratched that itch, and also what I’m not looking for:
what am I even talking about?
– pre-1970s: it’s not a hard rule by any means, but I find books written when the author likely had actually encountered servants (or employed their own) are much more grounded, complex, and nuanced when it comes to exploring class.
– marxism?: the author doesn’t have to be explicitly a marxist, but what interests me is the way that material realities of class can absorb all social relations so an author with a marixist lens or at least a complicated understanding of class is preferred.
– lord-bondsman dialectic: again, the author doesn’t actually need to be referencing Hegel’s lord-bondsman dialectic, but if you, dear reader, happened to be a literary theory/cultural studies/intellectual history type guy and know the sort of novel you would use as an example in a paper examining the lord-bondsman dialectic in literature, that is exactly the book I want to read
examples in no particular order:
books that fit:
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende
Transformation by Carol Berg
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Longbourne by Jo Baker
The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate
The Gamekeeper by Barry Hines
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
plays that fit:
Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti by Bertholt Brecht
A Tempest by Aimé Césaire
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekov
Miss Julie by August Strindberg
movies that fit:
Maurice (1987)
The Servant (1963)
Lady Macbeth (2016)
Atonement (2007) (but just the first half)
Harvest (2024)
Happy as Lazzaro (2018)
Mudbound (2017)
Bernard and Doris (2006)
La Cérémonie (1995)
Babbette’s Feast (1987)
slant rhymes (media that is close enough but doesn’t totally hit the mark):
Joust by Mercedes Lackey
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
The Ruling Class (1972)
Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
Maurice by E.M. Forster (you’ll notice the movie did hit the mark, I felt the book did not flesh out the themes I was specifically interested in well)
First Cow (2019)
Albert Nobbs by George Moore
The Little Hours (2017)
The Handmaiden (2016)
Persona (1966)
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Anderson
Lady Chatterly’s Lover (2022)
Downton Abbey (but just the bits where Branson is still an Irish Republican)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Roma (2018)
The Favourite (2018)
I, Rigoberta Menchú: an Indian Woman in Guatemala by Rigoberta Menchú
The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
Prefume: The Story of a Murder (2006)
Lawn Dogs (1997)
Barkskins by Annie Prolx
My Man Godfrey (1936)
what do I NOT want to read?
-romance!: this is the big theme I want to avoid. Obviously, some of the examples I provided as good fits include romance as a plot point, but I am not interested in romance as the primary theme of the book.
– smut: by the same token, I really have no interest in smut of any kind. Again, the characters can certainly have sexual relationships, but I do NOT want to read smut.
-YA/middle grade: I’ve have left a few YA titles as example because I read them when I was younger and they fit the bill, but I am not interested in reading anything YA or middle grade at this point in my life.
– Slavery, particularly in the Americas: I am most interested in the way that class power can subtlety be manifested, and one of the main horrors of slavery in general and in the Americas in particular is the explicit and pervasive violence that undergirds a slave society. While some of the pieces I’ve mentioned do tackle slavery, so I’m not completely against reading a book that centers enslaved people, I am much more interested in unspoken class power that out and out violence.
Books I have tried and did not finish (i’m finally turning to this community in hopes to find someone who’s a freak exactly like me to give me a recommendation. I have tried looking on like StoryGraph or other book recommendation sites and that’s where all of these titles came from, but they all missed the mark):
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher
Cathedral by the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
The Daughter of Docotor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
thank you for reading my long-winded post! truly any recommendation is appreciated, i know I'm asking for something rather specific 🙂
by judith_cutler