Domestic Instruction

With "Domestic Instruction", we are brought two fantasy female-led tales in the retro-style, dealing with the subject of men taken into domestic service by women. Be the reasoning of those men financial desperation or a simple but overpowering need to be near the objects of their affections. We open with Ms Rachilde's "Manservant"; as a dissolute English gentleman in the 1920's finds himself out of options after his inheritance has been squandered and his debts - including one to a vengeful and homicidal underworld figure - have become unsustainable.
Which is when he receives an offer... An offer through a friend and local solicitor to become the full-time live-in Manservant to a trio of financially sound and genteel ladies... Ladies with very specific "romantic" takes. This is followed by Maurice Huysman's "A Cage For Hercules"; in which a young woman living with her aunt discovers that her own yearning to supervise and mould the opposite sex is mirrored in her older relative and finds both their lives becoming a sight more interesting as a result.
Especially with the advent into their quiet village existence of a wealthy man from the city looking for an idyll of his own in the peaceful British countryside. A wealthy man who soon finds himself hopelessly smitten with not only the niece but the early-feminist aunt herself. 2-Books of retro and believable female-led fantasy fiction for the reader who enjoys the exercise of the imagination.