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.
Themes
Fantasy, Roleplay, and Identity Slippage
One of the common conventions of absurdist plays is the instability and inconsistency of character identities. The idea of the cohesive self is just an illusion. Through roleplay, Claire and Solange become Madame and Claire, but they are only portraying their characters through the lens of their own interpretations. And even through these interpretations, the conflicts between Claire and Solange as sisters emerge and peek through. Through Madame, Claire enacts her own desires to see herself as beautiful and to punish Solange for dragging her into the dirt. And through Claire, Solange performs her desires to receive the punishment she feels she deserves, to bring Madame down, and to humble her sister.
The three women’s identities change through roleplay and through abrupt switches in character. Solange and Claire tempestuously trade places as dominant and submissive, enraged and calm, murderous and mild. Neither is stable nor consistent in their attitudes and mannerisms. They simply change to counter each other, always in opposition. When Madame first enters, she is the opposite of Claire’s portrayal of her. Whereas Claire interprets her as a cruel, abusive tyrant, Madame is initially kind, generous, and concerned for her maids’ well-being. And when the situation changes, Madame changes again. No longer sad, she is cheerfully demanding and self-centered, but also still different from Claire’s performance.
Feeding these illusions and acts of pretend are the fantasies to which all three women are susceptible. Claire writes romantic stories and privately fantasizes about becoming Madame. She dreams about the passion of following a lover to Devil’s Island, throwing away social convention even in Madame’s high social standing. Solange pretends to be pragmatic, but Claire points out that she consumes Claire’s fantasies with as much fervor as her sister. And Madame heightens her love affair by repeating Claire’s fantasy of Devil’s Island, romanticizing herself as a tragic lover. Throughout the play, fantasy, imagination, and reality bleed into one another, destabilizing identities so that when Claire drinks poison, she is somehow killing both herself and Madame.
Absurdity and Class Disparity
The Theatre of the Absurd attempts to capture the illogic of existence and the feeling of disharmony. This means that absurdist plays don’t depict the world as completely nonsensical but instead show life that doesn’t quite make sense. Typically, this looks like realism at first, and then the cracks and strangeness start to show through. In The Maids Genet shows the absurdity and illogic of class structures as social constructs. The action of the play reflects Frederich Nietzsche’s now-heavily criticized theory of master/slave morality. In his theory, morality isn’t absolute but constructed by masters who control the world. The master values power and the exertion of their will. Slave morality reacts to master morality and values undermining the masters—bringing them down rather than becoming them. Similarly, Solange and (to a lesser degree) Claire are determined to destroy Madame and Monsieur but not to take their places in power.
The relationship between the maids and Madame also mimics Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s concept of the master/slave dialectic. Hegel suggests that humans learn to identify themselves and their place in society through mutual recognition. Solange and Claire can define themselves as slaves by recognizing Madame, and Madame defines herself as a master by recognizing her maids as slaves. But while the master sees the slave as existing only to fulfill their demands, their identity and consciousness as a master depends on the existence of and recognition by their slaves, which is a sort of agency and control. Through their obsession with Madame, their building her up through roleplaying, Claire and Solange reify and reinscribe Madame as their master. The maids create a moral and social hierarchy that goes beyond the employer/employee relationship, placing themselves as lesser humans.
Claire, and especially Solange, both decry their low status and reject the idea of becoming like Madame or Monsieur, even though they could eventually be set to inherit her money. Claire attempts to destroy Monsieur by accusing him of being a thief, and Solange becomes enraged when she mishears “bungler” as “burglar” (41) and believes that Claire is accusing her of the same thing. When Madame suggests that Claire could be more than a maid, Claire demurs, “I’m not complaining” (78). In the end, Solange asserts that they never needed Madame’s dresses, preferring infamy and prison clothes. The maids want to escape their lives of drudgery, not by becoming Madame but by destroying themselves and interrupting the master/slave dialect that continually reaffirms Madame’s superiority.
Love and Social Class
For Madame, love is a romantic fantasy. She is young, beautiful, and rich, and love comes so easily to her that she takes Monsieur for granted. Madame doesn’t value love until she fears that she has lost it. In contrast, Solange has tried to instill in Claire her conviction that they, as maids, are unworthy of love and incapable of truly loving each other. She teaches Claire to see themselves as outsiders, sub-humans within the household. Solange asserts that even when Madame is kind, she can only love them as much as she loves furniture. When Solange imagines Madame at Claire’s funeral, she finds it offensive that Madame would wear a black dress when Solange is certain that Madame feels nothing but contempt at being treated as if the maids are her family. Additionally, their love for Madame is worth less because they are lesser humans.
But Claire does not fully accept the idea that they cannot have love—not at first, at least. For instance, Claire expresses resentment at her sister for stealing the affections of Mario the milkman as if he is a worthy lover. She romanticizes their servants’ quarters and the men who sneak in to visit them at night. But Solange’s experience with “lovers” is less romantic and more violating. She reframes their interactions with the milkman by describing Mario as a crass man who makes lewd comments to both sisters. She describes the hardship and sacrifice of multiple self-induced abortions. Even in the last moments of her life, her executioner takes away her dignity and bodily autonomy by attempting to kiss her.
However, Solange contradicts herself by clearly demonstrating intense love and almost maternal affection for Claire. She confesses that she aborted her pregnancies to protect Claire. And when Claire becomes enraged and refers to encounters with the milkman as rape, this suggests that Solange has “stolen” him as a lover to keep him away from her sister. This disillusionment with love and the attention of men feeds the anger of both sisters at their inability to sabotage Madame’s love. They see Madame’s relationship as integral to her higher stature, something that she demonstrates as true when she believes Monsieur is in jail and begins to give away her belongings.
