34 pages • 1 hour read
Jean GenetThe Maids
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Ceremony
The play begins and ends with what Solange and Claire refer to as a ceremony. What initially seems to be an opportunity to play dress-up in Madame’s clothes is actually a ritual with great symbolism and significance to the sisters. Claire and Solange are Catholic, and as Claire describes, they have a small shrine to the Virgin Mary in their bedroom. The ceremony, however, is blasphemous, and Solange is horrified at the idea of incorporating religious prayer. The roleplay they enact is their version of a Passion Play, a centuries-old performance tradition that began in the Catholic Church and reenacted the last days of Jesus Christ, ending in death and resurrection. But in their ceremony, their trials and tribulations end in Madame’s death, leading to a resurrection of sorts for the maids, who will rise out of servitude and become infamous.
In the version of the ceremony at the start of the play, Claire-as-Madame exclaims that she is even more beautiful than the Virgin Mary. She wants to wear white, the color of purity and light, but Solange-as-Claire insists that she wear red, the color of blood or, as Solange exclaims near the end of the play, the color of their shame. It’s also the same color that Solange wears as a criminal. Solange subjects herself to cruelty and abuse as a type of self-flagellation, performing penance for being a maid and ultimately for her sister’s death. In Christian mythology the execution of Jesus is meant to be a sacrifice to save the world. Although the sacrifice within the sisters’ ritual is meant to be Madame, Claire is far more innocent. Until the final moments of the play, Claire is afraid Solange will kill her, but at the end, Claire goes willingly. She sacrifices herself so that she and Solange can be bound spiritually and transcend their lives as maids. With the play’s last lines, Solange declares that Madame is the one who is dead and that both sisters survived, as if Claire has been resurrected in her mind.
Time and Death
The action of The Maids takes place in ambiguous real time. There are no act breaks, scene divisions, or any placeholders to suggest the passage of time. And in the few instances where everyone leaves the room, the stage is left empty until the characters return. But time doesn’t quite work properly, which is a common convention of absurdism. When the play begins, the maids are mid-ceremony, with Claire-as-Madame dressing as if to go out, but there is no indicator of the actual time of day. The first marker of time is the clock alarm, which signals the sisters to end the ritual before Madame comes home, even though there is no reason for either of them to know when to expect Madame to return from dealing with Monsieur’s arrest. This signifies that time is relative for the maids rather than absolute, centered on Madame’s comings and goings.
For Madame, her perception of time seems to center on Monsieur. When Madame enters, she has been “trailing through corridors all night long” (66) before visiting a magistrate’s wife. She relates what feels like a lengthy struggle to Monsieur doing time behind bars. As Madame waits for the tea, she feels guilty for this luxury and wishes Claire would bring the tea faster, as if she knows that the tea is poisoned and will end her shame. Madame speaks about Monsieur’s imprisonment as if it is the same as death, implying that her life is also over by giving away her belongings. When Madame learns that Monsieur called and is waiting for her, time seems to stretch. She is concerned about the five minutes that have elapsed since the call and claims that Solange has taken an hour to call a taxi.
The play is also about aging, death, and running out of time. Madame looks in the mirror and worries that she has lost her youth and will lose her lover. By the end of the play, all three women are exhausted, but none of them can sleep until the ceremony has played out and ended in death. Madame escapes her brush with death at the last minute when she learns that her lover is waiting and leaves. Both Claire and Solange try to stop the ceremony before death must occur, but Madame has vowed to stay out all night and won’t be returning to interrupt them. In the end, Claire accepts the inevitable death that finally ends the ritual. Solange’s time ends as well, as she goes to prison and ends up executed.
Filth
In the play’s first line, Claire-as-Madame insults Solange-as-Claire for bringing kitchen gloves into her bedroom. The kitchen is the domain of servants, and both maids, especially Solange, consider servants to be filthy and disgusting. While performing the ceremony, Claire expresses revulsion for Solange, which also translates as revulsion for herself since Solange is playing the part of Claire. She recoils when Solange touches her while helping her dress. Solange claims that as maids, they can’t even love each other as sisters because they are filthy and disgust each other. Claire, who fantasizes about rising above the filth, despises Solange because she sees a reflection of herself in her sister. However, when she sees herself in Madame’s mirror, she finds herself beautiful.
One aspect of the ceremony is spreading filth around the house to equalize the power balance between the maids and Madame. The sisters touch her things, wear her clothes, and use her makeup. Solange spits on Madame’s dress, and both sisters lay in Madame’s bed. As maids, they seem to do the opposite of their jobs. When Madame notices that there is a layer of dust on the dressing table, she makes this unwittingly apt observation: “Their housekeeping is the most extraordinary combination of luxury and filth” (76). The maids see themselves reflected in each other, and they see their lowliness reflected back at them by Madame’s privilege. At the play’s end, Solange claims to have strangled Madame with the rubber kitchen gloves, finally overwhelming her with the filth that has engulfed the maids’ existence.
