About the Author
Julia Stanski (she/her) is a settler scholar and MA History graduate from the University of Alberta. Her research centers on western Canadian women’s history in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. With a BA in drama and English, she is fundamentally a storyteller, and she is passionate about sharing the untold stories of working-class women. Outside of her research, Julia is active in Edmonton’s musical theatre community as a choreographer, dance captain, performer, and writer.
Document Type
Article
Abstract
This study explores the daily lives and power relations with their employers of urban and rural domestic servants in Canada’s prairie west. It focuses on the lands now known as Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba between approximately 1880 and 1920, when expanding settler populations were driving a strong demand for domestic labour and new economic and demographic pressures were transforming the profession. Based on newspaper archives and the autobiographical writings of two servants from early twentieth-century western Canada, the paper argues that throughout this period, the day-to-day lives of rural and urban domestics differed significantly in their types of work and their relationships with their employers. Across these differences, however, both rural and urban servants and employers shared similar means of asserting power within these relationships. The article finds that although the structure of domestic service gave employers ultimate power over their servants, the high demand and short supply of female domestic labour during these years gave both rural and urban servants more relative power to choose their situations and negotiate conditions. Finally, it cautions that the personal circumstances of how badly an employer needed help and how badly a servant needed work were key to shaping individual power relationships.
Recommended Citation
Stanski, Julia
(2026)
"Patterns of Practice and Power: Urban and Rural Domestic Service in Western Canada, c. 1880–1920,"
Madison Historical Review: Vol. 23, Article 10.
Available at:
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/mhr/vol23/iss1/10
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