Do you think the servants left because
She went mad or because she had murdered herself & the kids thus no further employment.
Heath Ledger Come Back,
This isn't funny, at all.
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I think the family hired servants (not shown in the film) that left after Grace murdered the children because they were no longer needed.
The two "servants" in the film, as you said, died of illness long ago around the turn of the century and they took the opportunity to "respond" to Grace's advertisement (which in fact had not yet been posted).
As the plot twist unfolds, perfectly clear what *happened*
Remember when Grace found those old photos then flipped through the last album, realizing those folks were deceased (all eyes closed) with horror, near mystified that dead people were photographed, like a morbid fixation or past-time (she evidently wasn't aware that some cultures did such, for postmortem photography)
And Mrs. Mills explains later to her about the spread of the disease *picking off* most of the household (and the area) ... and about those who'd survived (or the coroner, etc) postmortem photographing their deceased or loved ones (as obviously technology wasn't around then)
Then Grace discovers that her *returned* servants are part of the deceased from those photos (from tuberculosis). I had long figured this part out, after Mrs. Mills orders the gravestones unearthed, to show Grace *in due time*
Peanutlee33
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That's a good observation. I watched this movie when it first came out and then again for this Halloween and wondered about the servants as well.
shareThe OP was asking about Grace's servants. The ones that she says "left" at the beginning of the movie. I am not sure about this. It would make much more sense if the servants had left AFTER the events of "that day" as it could mean that they are still alive and thus cannot be seen, but the characters insinuate more than once that the servants left and THEN Grace goes mad. Perhaps the ghosts are just confused about time? Or perhaps the servants did, in fact, just leave because living in a drak, depressing house with a woman slowly going mad isn't very fun...
We'll call it the psychotic bastard religion.