Working in Service: Let’s Talk About the Downton Abbey Series Finale

When I think about why I love Downton Abbey so much—besides the clothes, of course; part of the reason to watch Downton is simply to watch people wear clothes—I think about my own experience both in the workplace and in the world.

I’ve written before how closely Downton parallels and reflects our current economic situation, but I’ll let this statistic from Katie Klabusich’s Billfold piece on poverty, service jobs, and resumes illustrate what I mean:

According to everyone from the United States Department of Labor to The Coalition of Services Industries (CSI), the service industry is growing at an unprecedented rate. However you feel about this sector of the economy or capitalism in general, that is where the majority of us are currently employed. In fact, CSI says that in 49 out of 50 states, services jobs provide 70 percent or more of overall employment. In Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, and New York, the service sector provides more than 80 percent of the jobs.

At the turn of the previous century, Downton shows us, you could be a member of the wealthy elite, you could be a middle-class professional, you could run a small business, or you could work in service.

I’m not sure all that much has changed.

Back in Downton’s first season, we’re introduced to Gwen Dawson, the housemaid who is desperate for an entry-level office job because it will provide her with more freedom and the possibility for career advancement. I’m not going to say that the work she did as a secretary was any more real than the work she did as a housemaid, but that’s a sentiment that still persists a hundred years later.

So many of us still want that office job, with its regular hours (in theory, anyway), comfortable environment, and increased opportunity—both to move up within the organization and to make lateral moves, the way Gwen transitions from a secretary in a telephone office to a government worker specializing in education.

When people say they want a “real job,” that’s what they mean.

Service offers its own paths for advancement, and we see housemaids who want to become lady’s maids and footmen who dream of becoming butlers.

But it’s a different kind of advancement, in that—as Thomas finds out—there’s a hard stop at the end. Either you become a butler or you continue to take on low-paying footman positions or you leave service, and there aren’t a lot of transferable skills that’ll help you in your next job. People will look at you as having spent most of your life in service, and that’s something else that hasn’t changed in a hundred years.

Five characters get new jobs (or promotions) in Downton’s series finale. Let’s quickly examine the differences between them:

Joseph Molesley is offered the opportunity to go from a part-time to a full-time teacher, with a residence included as part of his compensation. Carson tells Molesley that he cannot accept the job unless the family gives him permission.

Septimus Spratt is invited to increase his freelance advice column to a full page. He has never asked for permission to take on freelance writing work, but he deliberately chooses a pseudonym, and part of the plot hinges on whether he will be fired from his service job if the Dowager Countess discovers his freelance work.

I’ll just drop two Billfold articles here, to make the present-day comparison:

Our employer not only determines what type of work we do—it often has a say in what type of work we are allowed to do next.

Thomas Barrow has to take the first available job, as so many of us do, and he ends up in a position that is a poor fit and is unlikely to provide him with career advancement. Our careers are so often capricious; the jobs we get literally determine the course of our lives, but we are rarely in situations where we can compare multiple offers and choose which job is best for us right now. If we are in Thomas’s situation, we have to accept what is given and make the best of it.

And yes, Thomas’s luck improves and he is invited to become Downton’s newest butler. Which—I mean, the position was never listed, for starters, and Thomas got it entirely through personal and workplace connections, and he’s still going to have to defer to Carson, Butler Emeritus. But that’s how the working world works.

As I’ve written before on The Billfold:

Any discussion of you need to get another job has to start with the idea that you don’t get jobs. Instead, you are given jobs.

Henry Talbot doesn’t have to ask someone to give him a job. He spends the first half of the episode leisurely wondering what career he should pursue next, and the second half of the episode working with Tom Branson to launch a car dealership. Why does he get this privilege, instead of hustling for the first job that becomes available? Money, of course, most of it “earned” through his marriage.

I would love to see a scene where Henry and Tom are busy writing checks to pay for, say, that enormous “Talbot and Branson Motors” sign:

TOM: I can’t believe how much it costs to put up a sign.

HENRY (smiling): Well, it’s all Mary’s money.

TOM: Have you asked her? Told her how much you’ve been spending?

HENRY: Mary won’t mind. Anyway, I prefer to surprise her.

I’m not an historian, but I’ve picked up the idea that a century ago the overwhelming majority of homes over a certain size/income would have had a household staff, and even smaller homes would have had a housekeeper and/or cook.

Now we have takeout and drive-thrus and coffee shops and housecleaning services and people who will deliver your groceries to your door—and so many people feel guilty about using these services, first because they’re a “waste of money” and second because we have this idea that we should be able to do all of this labor on our own.

I’m not sure we’ve ever really been able to. I mean, of course we’ve been able to, we’ve gotten through the day with our scrap meals and with globs of blue toothpaste sticking to the bottom of our sinks and it’s been fine.

But running a household—even a small apartment-sized household—requires work, and it requires time, and it requires a constant influx of supplies and we still pay people to do all of that for us. Offices and other organizations also need people to deliver food and supplies or clean the globs of toothpaste out of the sinks, and they pay service workers without feeling guilty about it.

Let’s quote that statistic from Katie Klabusich’s piece again: In 49 American states, service jobs provide 70 percent of all employment.

Downton Abbey will never go away. It’ll just change to meet the future, as Robert and Cora promise each other right before the series ends.

Previously: “Edith Would Outrank Us All:” Let’s Talk About Downton Abbey, Season 6 Episode 8

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