The paper analyzes the image of a domestic servant created in the Chapter “Happy” of Nekrasov's poem “To Whom in Russia to live well”. Russian literature's traditional depiction of the relationship between a devoted servant and a master is questioned. The authors also raise the question - how typical the image of the hero-“lickspittle” could be for the Russian people. According to the authors of the article, Nekrasov deliberately violated the objectivity of the image of a “happy” domestic person, deliberately caricatured it, yielding to the external need to condemn serfdom and denounce social injustice. The paper compares the Nekrasov position with the artistic worldview of the writers who preceded him. Thus, the article considers the images of Savelyich from “The Captain's daughter” by A. Pushkin, Zakhar from “Oblomov” by I. Goncharov, Firs from “The Cherry orchard” by A. Chekhov.