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A CHAMBERMAID'S DIARY by Octave Mirbeau
Jan. 14th, 2014 04:54 amTantalisingly, this English translation is said to have been censored and abbreviated to avoid contemporary moral guardians. ('Everybody ought to have a maid' by John Baxter' is a link that provides a few quotes of salacious detail not in the Project Gutenberg version.) This novel is detailed enough even with the censorship - something is definitely rotten in the state of domestic service! The book was published in 1900.
The book is set up as a non-fiction autobiography, as a genuine chambermaid's diary sent to the author, but it's clear from the convenient melodrama that this is only a framing device. But there's a ring of verisimiltude about it anyway - as per the approach of too many grimdark fantasy novels to count, there's enough emphasis on blood and phlegm and saliva and pus and assorted other bodily fluids to make the gist seem true. A chambermaid's life is not pleasant and this book illustrates it vividly, in a way that makes the author seem an excellent observer.
Celestine tells her story in achronic order, writing a diary of her time with the deeply unpleasant Lanlaires in the country and comparing it to her previous employment in Paris. This postmodern perspective lends interest to the reader, representing life as a confused jumble where cause and effect do not always run as expected. In real life we recall our past as we experience our present, thinking back to past moments connected even by the most trivial reminder - a scent, a shape, a sound. Celestine recounts her beginning as a fisherman's orphaned daughter, her places of employment, her experiences of abuse and consensual sex, her time with exploitative nuns abusing her labour, an oppressive employment bureau, and her daily life with the Lanlaires - where the murder of a little girl in the neighbourhood adds a macabre touch to her story.
The Lanlaires, Isidore and Euphrasie, are supposed to have absolutely hilarious names in the original French. (Unrelated note: Euphrasie is Cosette's inconvenient real name.) Lanlaire is similar to 'en l'air', or 'in the air'. Perhaps the English equivalent would be Eustace and Iphigenia Airyfairy?
The novel's partly in the genre of erotica as written by men, but it is also a frank expose of the power employers have over their domestic servants and the ways they can abuse this power. In turn, the servants are not idealised: this isn't Dickens by a long shot. Celestine says that however vile the riffraff, they are never as vile as the decent people - but the servants have a realistic level of self-interest even when they're unable to be as cruel as their employers.
It makes an extremely interesting case study to compare and contrast this novel with a non-fiction book published four years later, in the United States, by Christine Terhune Herrick: The Expert Maid-Servant.( Read more... )
The book is set up as a non-fiction autobiography, as a genuine chambermaid's diary sent to the author, but it's clear from the convenient melodrama that this is only a framing device. But there's a ring of verisimiltude about it anyway - as per the approach of too many grimdark fantasy novels to count, there's enough emphasis on blood and phlegm and saliva and pus and assorted other bodily fluids to make the gist seem true. A chambermaid's life is not pleasant and this book illustrates it vividly, in a way that makes the author seem an excellent observer.
Celestine tells her story in achronic order, writing a diary of her time with the deeply unpleasant Lanlaires in the country and comparing it to her previous employment in Paris. This postmodern perspective lends interest to the reader, representing life as a confused jumble where cause and effect do not always run as expected. In real life we recall our past as we experience our present, thinking back to past moments connected even by the most trivial reminder - a scent, a shape, a sound. Celestine recounts her beginning as a fisherman's orphaned daughter, her places of employment, her experiences of abuse and consensual sex, her time with exploitative nuns abusing her labour, an oppressive employment bureau, and her daily life with the Lanlaires - where the murder of a little girl in the neighbourhood adds a macabre touch to her story.
The Lanlaires, Isidore and Euphrasie, are supposed to have absolutely hilarious names in the original French. (Unrelated note: Euphrasie is Cosette's inconvenient real name.) Lanlaire is similar to 'en l'air', or 'in the air'. Perhaps the English equivalent would be Eustace and Iphigenia Airyfairy?
The novel's partly in the genre of erotica as written by men, but it is also a frank expose of the power employers have over their domestic servants and the ways they can abuse this power. In turn, the servants are not idealised: this isn't Dickens by a long shot. Celestine says that however vile the riffraff, they are never as vile as the decent people - but the servants have a realistic level of self-interest even when they're unable to be as cruel as their employers.
It makes an extremely interesting case study to compare and contrast this novel with a non-fiction book published four years later, in the United States, by Christine Terhune Herrick: The Expert Maid-Servant.( Read more... )
