Victorian and Edwardian Dress and Customs looks at the rules and requirements that shaped fashionable society on both sides ...

Servants should never offer any opinion to their employers, nor even to say good night or good morning except in reply to salutation. Never talk to another servant, or a person of your own rank ...

The difficulties of Edwardian life and the fact that her job was arguably the hardest work in the house, would certainly achieve that. With the male servants eager to meet the new scullery maid ...