Maid in Space: Contemporary French cinematic translation of the 19th century rebellious maid figure

Abstract

This thesis offers a spatial analysis of the representation of female servitude and rebellion in contemporary French cinema through the archetype of the 19th century rebellious maid figure. The rebellious maid figure is an historical, social and cultural construct upon which a series of spatialised iconographic features were grafted during the nineteenth century and that continue to be employed in contemporary cinematic mise en scène. This thesis uncovers dual spatial translation processes. The first process under study is the translation of the maid’s ‘space syntax’ (a spatial and architectural iconography) into the cinematic medium. Film, by way of its spatial diegesis and mise-en-scène, manifests in a particular manner the archetypal maid’s narrative of servitude and rebellion. This will be demonstrated through the study of Chabrol’s La Cérémonie (1995) and Dercourt’s La Tourneuse de pages (2006), two films that represent, in a typological ma nner, the domestic architectural setting associated with the 19th century bonne à tout faire and her syntax of space. The second process that I refer to is that of the translation of the maid’s space syntax onto updated, contemporary social contexts and spatial settings of female servitude and rebellion in cinema that are divorced from the original domestic environment of the traditional maid figure. Achache’s Le Hérisson (2009), Klapisch’s Ma part du gâteau (2011), Charef’s Marie-Line (2000), and Mennegun’s Louise Wimmer (2012) will be analysed in that context. By examining how the maid figure is translated across time, space and medium, this thesis demonstrates the power of social and cultural constructions of space to endure radical temporal and environmental changes. In effect, this thesis will argue, the archetypal 19th century maid figure and her attendant space syntax survive as a latent construct that filmmakers draw upon in order to stage narrati ves of servitude and rebellion. The findings of this underta! king seek to inform critical understandings of the politics and poetics of the representation of rebellion in films that present narratives of female servitude.