"For any nineteenth-century family with social pretensions at least one domestic servant was essential," so at least Pamela Horn argues in The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant (17). The domestic servant in Victorian England occupied an ambiguous place among the many class-based social groupings. Although the service quarter were ostensibly "working-class," they oftened identified with the wealth of affluent employers. Such domestic service was a valued occupation, one vyed for even by children. "The attention of a mother and her daughter began to turn to the question of getting a place as soon as the girl had reached about twelve or thirteen" (Horn 36). The identity politics concerning women, especially, precariously situated the governess somewhere between the family and hired-help. Indoor service, primarily the responsibility of women, had a hierarchical organization privileging "housekeepers" the "lady's maid" and then finally "the nurse, the housemaids, kitchenmaids, scullery-maids and laundry staff" (48). In other words, women had a large hand in constructing an understanding of the interior domestic sphere. Horn explains how outdoor service was a matter for male servants — that is, "coachmen, grooms, gardeners" (63).
Gaskell and Dickens rehearse seemingly antithetical viewpoints concerning the power relationships between master and servant. Gaskell uses the technique of irony to suggest that Dixon has so internalized her own subordiation that she has come to embrace her subserviance to the Hales. Keep in mind, this scene occurs just after Margaret receives news of her father's renunciation of his church position. Margaret admonishes Dixon for commenting upon Mr. Hale's wavering faith, lashing out at Dixon's attempts to overstep class bounds. "You forget to whom you are speaking." And in so saying Margaret predicates her own authority upon Dixon's subordination. What is ironic is that later on Dixon's "good feeling" reconciles Margaret's scolding because it reaffirms Margaret atop a stable social structure of which Dixon is glad to have some part — even a subservient part! "The truth was, that Dixon, as do many others, liked to feel herself ruled by a powerful and decided nature." In other words, Dixon's subjugation is a willed concession (I believe Veblen might say a "trained incapacity") made to be able to share in the Hales' modest wealth.
In contrast, Dickens portrayal of the relationship between Pickwick and Sam Weller problematizes the Hegelian master/slave dialectic by means of a comic trope later reappropriated by Dorothy Sayers and P.G. Wodehouse: the learned servant who, familiar with seemingly all the angles, guides his fumbling master towards life experience. In this sense the relationship between Sam and Pickwick recalls Bakhtin's idea of the Carnival. In the Carnival, everything taken for granted is turned on its ear. "Hierarchies are turned on their heads (fools become wise, kings become beggars); opposites are mindled (fact and fantasy, heaven and hell); the sacred is profaned" (Raman Selden, Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 40). In many ways, Sam's sagacity is not unlike the fool in Shakespeare's King Lear who is ironically less a fool than Lear himself. And yet notice how Sam Weller nonetheless stays obediant to Pickwick and actually commits himself to the debtor's prison so as to better serve his master.
"Your bed!" exclaimed mr. Pickwick, in astonishment.
"Yes, my bed, Sir," replied Sam. "I'm a prisoner. I was arrested this here wery artnernoon for debt."
"You arrested for debt!" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, sinking into a chair.
"Yes, for debt, Sir," replied Sam; "and the man as put me in 'ull never let me out, till you go yourself." (674)
In the same measure that Bedivere follows through with Arthur's dying wishes, Sam Weller demonstrates fealty to Pickwick by submerging his identity underneath his master's experiences (ironically, much in the same way Job Trotter is for the most part loyal to Jingle). In this sense Dickens dissolves the master-slave relationship into the larger community of middle-class men. If Sam and Pickwick's relationship is more equitable than Dixon and Margaret's, then gender, or more accurately male-gendered friendships or brotherhoods — out-privileges class.