Until Alison Light's book, most critics sympathetic to Woolf would sweep her views of servants under the carpet. Or deny their importance to understanding the literary work of modernism. But since the rise of new historicism and cultural studies, information about the obscure lives af servants and Woolf's view have been framed in terms of social change and power relations--"on or about December 1910, human character changed:--signaling the rise of the cook and the maid....

Alison Light, Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Press (2008)

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