There is a beautiful poem by Yeats, entitled To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing, in

which the poet considers what it means to hold onto dignity in the face of defeat.

Because of all things known / That is most difficult.

As the century progressed and women began to leave service to work elsewhere (and notably, to participate in the war effort), those prior years of sustained labor endowed them with a sense of purpose, direction, and fortitude

The idea that one might be :

Bred to a harder thing / than triumph might be as good a battle cry as any for the resiliency that did emerge, over time, for those working in service. Once emancipated from the trappings of domestic labor, these women were among our earliest working feminists.