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Hardy scrutinizes the dynamics of an employment relationship between two women in which libidinal energies interfere with the exchange of intangible responsibilities.
Hardy‘s novels reveal the paradoxical, double-edged implications of the public realm‘s intrusion into the domestic space the mistress-companion dynamic represents.
Like Braddon and Wood before him, Hardy recognizes that public concerns like power and money are not distinct from but are present in and can interfere with relationships located within the domestic space. However, Hardy is even more interested in the problematic effects of the fact that these two spheres remain separate enough that public policies cannot govern or protect parties in an employment relationship situated in the home. The characteristic insularity of the mistress-companion relationship allows Hardy to engage with questions of human rights within the employer-employee association.
Hardy perceives that once the employment relationship is added to the female bond, an idealized relationship in the Victorian period, havoc occurs within both the mistress- companion dyad and the narrative itself—desire and power supersede sympathy for these mistresses and the chaos that ensues generates the plot. Hardy‘s novels suggest that true sympathy and reciprocity are impossible in the employment relationship, even where one would most expect to find them: in a relationship between two women based in the domestic space.
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to avert the threatened harm. The implication that an agent exists, in turn, implies that
‗vulnerability‘ is essentially a relational notion‖ (112). Thus, Goodin asserts, ―protecting the vulnerable (no matter how their vulnerability is interpreted) must be primarily a matter of protecting those people whose vital interests are particularly vulnerable to our actions and choices‖ (111). Within these parameters, the Victorian companion is, by nature of her dependent position, definitively ―vulnerable‖ to her mistress. As we saw in Dickens‘s depiction of Mrs. Wititterly and Kate, the mistress‘s decisions and behavior can have a direct effect on the companion‘s well-being. In her lack of consideration, Mrs. Wititterly, for example, fails to uphold what Goodin refers to as the ―First Principle of Individual Responsibility‖: ―If A‘s interests are vulnerable to B‘s actions and choices, B has a special responsibility to protect A‘s interests‖ (118). Goodin‘s ―Second
Principle‖ pluralizes the first by stating that this same rule of ―special responsibility‖
applies to groups of individuals responsible to other groups of individuals; for example, the body of Victorian England‘s employers have certain ethical responsibilities to the great mass of Victorian workers.
The Master-Slave paradigm served as the model for nineteenth-century legislators and moralists interested in promoting the rights of the worker. In Principles of Political Economy (1848), John Stuart Mill writes that ―the generality of labourers‖ in Victorian England are ―practically as dependent on fixed rules and on the will of others, as they could be on any system short of slavery‖ (210). Workers are vulnerable to their employers for their livelihood and, by extension, for their basic human needs. As such, many felt that it was the duty of the fortunate and powerful to ensure that their vulnerable brethren, whether they be agricultural laborers, industrial workers, trade apprentices,
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domestic servants, or otherwise, were protected. As Charles E. Baker, solicitor to the supreme court and author of several tracts pertaining to British law, noted in 1881,
―Every advance of general civilization has been marked by an increasing tendency to regard the workman more and more as a man having the right to live and labour for himself and less and less as a mere instrument of toil for the use or pleasure of another‖
(2).
In 1824, George White, a clerk to the committee of Artisans and Machinery in the House of Commons, presaged the view of many Victorians when he wrote, ―The making of good and salutary laws for the regulating of masters and servants is one of the greatest magnitude, as by these laws a national character and resources are necessarily formed‖
(13).1 Workplace issues were at the forefront of legislative consciousness and these
―salutary laws‖ represented a new kind of State-sponsored paternalism that would regulate employer-employee relations in statistically measurable ways. As such, these acts were focused primarily on protecting the material and physical rights of the employee. A series of Factory Acts meant to limit the number of hours worked by industrial laborers, particularly women and children, were passed in the early 1830s;
these were followed by further legislation regulating mine and factory work throughout the 1840s and in 1850. During the second half of the century, the government increased
1 In their discussions of employer-employee relations, Victorians generally used the somewhat outdated designations of ―master‖ and ―servant,‖ although many were careful to define their terms. Baker, for example, writes that ―When we in ordinary parlance speak of ‗servants,‘ we generally mean domestic servants or menials; but legally, and throughout this little handbook, the word has a much wider signification. It includes tutors, governesses, and clerks, although a master would hardly like to address any of those persons as servants; […] Of course workmen, mechanics, artisans, operatives, miners, soldiers, sailors, and policemen are all servants—indeed, the term ‗master and servant‘ might be almost changed into ‗employers and employed,‘ for the two terms are now synonymous‖ (39).
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supervision over issues as diverse as the rights of trade unions to laws regarding breach of contract and employers‘ liabilities. The Employers‘ Liability Act of 1880, as
described by Walter Cook Spens in 1887, for instance, held that ―the master is
responsible in damage for all injuries arising from causes which he might have foreseen and obviated, such as defects in his machinery, neglect to avail himself of appropriate appliances for preventing danger, […] in short, all risks which can be said to arise from his rashness, carelessness, or neglect‖ (43). This Act, along with similar legislation like the various Coal Mine Acts (1842, 1850, 1872) referred to physical injury alone,
however. Formal law did not regulate more immaterial dangers such as mental or emotional harm, or even harm to one‘s reputation, although these considerations were beginning to be addressed in this period.
Many Victorian writers also felt that, as barrister Almaric Rumsey put it 1892,
―the rights of one are, so to speak, the duties of the other‖ (19). Therefore, essay after essay during the latter part of the nineteenth century delineates the various
responsibilities of the employer to the employee. Baker, for example, lists and provides commentary on several ―duties of the master‖: the master must ―receive [the servant]
into his service‖ if there has been an agreement between them (56), barring legitimate misconduct; ―it is another duty of the master to retain the servant in his service during the whole time he has agreed to do so,‖ or else provide adequate notice (57); the master must
―pay the servant the wages agreed upon‖ (58) and, according to the Truck Acts, that wage
―must be paid in current coin of the realm, payment in goods being illegal‖ (60).2 Like
2 The question of payment is especially pertinent to an examination of the ways in which the mistress-companion employment relationship often existed outside of workplace law.
Although some companions were compensated with wages ―paid in current coin of the