Jeeves - why a butler?

good pay, easy work, the smug satisfaction knowing your 'master' is an idiot and can't live without you.

So, anyone else ever wondered why Jeeves has chosen to be a manservant, rather than a scientist/politician/professor/businessman/whatever? He could certainly make a fortune out of it.

Being a politician, scientist, or businessman might have been difficult if Jeeves came from a working class background. At the time the first story was published (1915) being a "gentleman's personal gentleman" was considered a pretty classy job.

"Humour is just common sense moving at high speed."
- Derek Robinson

Jeeves was a domestic servant and by definition working class (though you'd never guess it from Fry's performance). He would have had little formal education and limited career opportunities - unlike his master, who has had both the education and the opportunities but is too lazy and asinine to do anything useful with them.

There's a history of the smart servant/dumb master that goes way back. And making fun of the Drones (Monied young men with no real ambition or wit is poking fun at his own class.) It allows Wodehouse to be self effacing and put all his clever writing in Jeeves's mouth. This was an era that never really existed. PG makes no references to WW I for example. And to quote Godfrey from My Man Godfrey when asked if he's proud to be a butler- : "Proud of being a good butler. And I may add, sir, a butler has to be good to hold his job here."
And Jeeves is the very best.

MAny years ago, there was a Companion to The Jeeves and Wooster Stories that explained why Jeeves was content to remain in Bertie's Service.

Bertie Wooster was an orphan with two married sisters and various aunts and just one uncle who was presumably Bertie's father's older brother. Uncle George inherited a title in the stories and became Lord Yaxley and married a middle-aged barmaid.Jeeves approves of this match as he knew that there would be no offspring and so when Uncle George goes to the great drinking club in the sky Bertram Wilberforce Wooster would become the next Lord Yaxley.

As a member of the aristocracy Bertie naturally takes his place in the House of Lords and still guided by Jeeves is asked by the King to become Prime Minister. Thus Jeeves becomes the adviser to the British Prime Minister and runs the British Empire.

Jeeves is a valet, not a butler, he serves a man not a household. Though if it comes down to it, Jeeves can "buttle with the best of them".

Obi-Wan is my hero!

A man of means like Wooster would naturally have a valet; Wooster was fortunate in finding in Jeeves a person of superior intellect. Rochester, of Jack Benny fame, was something similar to Jeeves; Rochester knew he was smarter than Jack, and that Jack's largesse, in reality, was for Rochester's benefit.

it is a bit hard to understand. Although he comes from a working class background, you would think someone as clever as jeeves would have been able to get a scholarship to a grammar school, and then one to university, like A.L. Rowse ( son of a cornish clay miner, who became an oxford professor). i would see jeeves as an academic rather than a politician, perhaps a university professor, writing learned articles and giving lectures etc. i think it's just one of those things that we have to accept as part of the world of wodehouse without trying to rationalise it.