‘She had her rôle to play’: East Lynne and the Servant Actress

Abstract

As exemplified by many of the criminal servants previously discussed, one of the stock characters of Victorian sensation fiction is the ‘upwardly-mobile “imposter”’ (Wynne 50). Contemporary publications expressed ridicule for the practice that Punch dubbed ‘Servantgalism’—servants who attempt to dress or act like their masters. Ellen Wood’s East Lynne (1861) offers a prime example of this character type in Aphrodite ‘Afy’ Hallijohn. Afy’s proclivity to ‘“dress outrageously fine”’ and her ‘“disreputable”’ social pretensions are evidence, in one character’s opinion, of ‘“[t]he world’s being turned upside down”’ (382). Although Afy is hired as ‘three parts maid and one part companion,’ and is not permitted ‘to sit or dine’ with her employer, she ‘was never backward at setting off her own consequence, [and] gave out that she was “companion”’ (390). Lyn Pykett identifies Afy as a representative of a common trope: ‘the saucy servant who apes her superiors and attempts to achieve her social ambitions by sexual means’ (‘Improper’ 123).