Connecticut

Steven Gray’s manor in Connecticut is the family residence and the grandest setting in the account of Eduard’s employment in a wealthy household. Home to Gray, his wife, and their three children, it also belongs to a domestic world supported by a staff of about ten. Set against Gray’s smaller New York pied-à-terre, the manor makes the scale of his wealth—and the hierarchy surrounding it—visible.

The Family Residence

Gray lives at the sumptuous manor with his wife and three children. His life moves between this home and a pied-à-terre on Sutton Place in New York City, with travel to Switzerland for skiing and the Indian Ocean for diving. The contrast between the two residences gives the Connecticut property its particular place in the account: it is not merely an urban base for Gray’s visits, but the home he shares with his family.

Household and Hierarchy

About ten people work in the Connecticut household, a scale that sets it apart from the small team associated with Gray’s New York apartment. Eduard enters this world through Jenny, Gray’s employee and Eduard’s girlfriend. The manor’s staff are described as waiting for, and dreading, the master’s visits; Gray comes seldom and rarely stays longer than a week. The account does not present him as a tyrant: he is impatient and can erupt over trifles, then apologize, while also taking pains to appear liberal. The combination of a large staff, deference to the employer, and anxiety about his arrival nonetheless makes the household’s unequal terms plain.

Narrative Significance

Connecticut represents the established domestic life Eduard can approach but does not share. Gray’s wealth is inherited, and his confident ease contrasts with Eduard’s dependent position in the household economy. The manor therefore sharpens the irony of Eduard’s entry into a rich man’s world: proximity to privilege does not make him its equal, but places him among those whose work sustains it.