48 pages • 1 hour read
Marie BenedictCarnegie's Maid
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Class System
The world of Carnegie’s Maid is dominated by social hierarchies. People are supposed to know their place, and they are actively discouraged from seeking to rise above it. This is particularly true in the Old-World Ireland from which Clara emigrates. Her ancestors were tenant farmers on the Martyn estate for generations, and no one in Galway seems interested in defying the status quo. Those who do are punished. Clara’s father is active in both the Chartist and Fenian movements that seek rights for commoners. As a result, he and his family are punished with the loss of their tenancy. Part of the reason that Clara is sent to America is to offset this retaliation.
Contrary to expectations, America is not always the land of opportunity for those who seek to rise above their station in life. The Carnegies are rare exceptions. Although Mrs. Carnegie has personally experienced the horrors of poverty and the oppressiveness of the class system, she becomes an oppressor herself once her family achieves wealth. She is intent on ensuring that Clara knows her subordinate place in the grand scheme of things. Clara also learns the distinction between superior and servant in the way that she and the rest of the household staff are treated. She sees this most clearly during the family’s trip to New York. The St. Nicholas Hotel offers grand accommodations to its wealthy guests, but their servants are relegated to spartan accommodations in the attic. Clara must sit on a hard bench outside the auditorium while her mistress attends an opera.
Although Clara is subjected to some discomfort and inconvenience as a servant of the Carnegies, her immigrant cousins are far less fortunate. They live in squalor while trying to earn enough money to keep themselves alive. As bad as their circumstances are, they would have been worse off if they had remained in Ireland, where they would surely have starved to death. America is depicted as the lesser of two evils but is hardly a land of unlimited opportunity. There are too many employers whose greed tempts them to exploit the working classes to increase their own wealth. Although wealth offers a cushion against the worst abuses of the class system, the Carnegies are subjected to another kind of social hierarchy when they attempt to breach the upper ranks of New York society. The descendants of the original Dutch settlers, known as Knickerbockers, create an artificial set of rules that keep new money out. As Clara notes, they don’t ascribe to the American ideal of democracy.
Roles and Identities
In large part, because of the rigid class system that shapes behavior, most of the central characters conceal who they really are. Everyone plays a variety of roles based on their intended audience. Clara is the most obvious example of this tendency. She assumes the identity of an experienced lady’s maid, who is familiar with the upper-class lifestyle and lies her way into employment with the Carnegies. Clara frequently takes herself to task for her duplicity because she must lie not only to the Carnegies but to her own family. In her letters home, she says that she is a simple housemaid rather than a lady’s maid. She also lies to her cousins about her situation so that news of her duplicity doesn’t reach Galway. Later in the book, she says, “I had played at so many roles in the years since landing in America, I had lost myself” (316).
Initially, Clara fails to recognize that Mrs. Carnegie is engaging in a similar role-play. She is newly rich and uncertain of the proper behavior expected of an upper-class lady. This is why she wanted to hire an experienced lady’s maid who could educate her on dress, hairstyles, and social etiquette. While she enjoys publicly lording her station over Clara, in private, she is utterly dependent on her maid’s advice on how to conduct herself.
Her son is also capable of shapeshifting as the occasion demands. He is an affable and charming host to his guests. He can also be a benign instructor to Clara. However, when crossed in business, he is capable of ruthlessness and a determination to win at all costs. After seeing this side of his nature, Clara is taken aback. She says, “As long as he met his objectives and furthered his family’s goals, he viewed his behavior favorably. But how could I claim a higher moral ground when I lied about who I was every single day?” (128).
As Clara will later learn, lying runs in the Kelley family. Her father has been a closet revolutionary for years and is actively involved in the Fenian movement to free Ireland from British rule. His actions jeopardize the welfare of his entire family. In fact, he ships Clara off to America to earn money, anticipating that his actions will cost the family their tenancy. Clara is outraged by this betrayal, but her cousin Maeve states matter-of-factly, “We all tell tales, Clara. Sometimes for ourselves, and sometimes for others” (192).
The Purpose of Wealth
The period after the Civil War was a time of industrial expansion that created massive fortunes for a handful of expeditious entrepreneurs. These nouveau riche families were intent on displaying their wealth as a way of signaling their right to join high society. Mark Twain coined the term Gilded Age to describe this era of conspicuous consumption: Those who possessed wealth were intent on displaying it through their opulent lifestyle and homes overstuffed with expensive bric-a-brac. At one point, Andrew explains to Clara that the mansion’s parlor is meant to convey an unspoken message to visitors about the family’s culture and taste. Clara forms her own opinion about the meaning of such ostentation:
It was almost as if the Carnegies were afraid of empty space. What did they fear might creep through a break in their sumptuous barrier? Dad used to always say that the Martyns’ thick castle walls were designed to keep out poverty as much as invaders (34).
Keeping out poverty is clearly a motivation for the Carnegie family since they, like the Kelleys, have known hardship. As a result, they use wealth as a fortress to keep poverty at bay. This is only one of the many uses of wealth depicted in the novel. It is also used to wield power over business competitors. At many points, Clara sees the ruthlessness of Andrew’s business tactics when he tries to cut out a rival to gain more market share. He isn’t above lying to his family and manipulating his friends to gain that advantage either. When Clara looks at the elaborate meals that the family guests enjoy, she calculates how many hungry families could be fed instead. Clara sees wealth as the means to relieve suffering. She frequently brings baskets of food from the Carnegie kitchen to the needy Lamb family.
Along the same altruistic lines, Andrew himself recognizes the tremendous value that a kind benefactor once afforded him. As a struggling youngster, he was allowed access to a rich man’s private library and was able to better himself by making the most of this opportunity. In later life, and largely due to Clara’s influence, Carnegie follows suit and establishes free libraries throughout the country for the benefit of the working classes. The novel suggests that wealth can be used for a variety of purposes, good and bad. Greedy tycoons amass wealth to gain prestige or power, but wealth can also be used by the altruistic to relieve suffering. Clara urges the latter and inspires Andrew to agree.
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By Marie Benedict
