The Maids and Deathwatch: Two Plays (Paperback)

by Jean Genet (Author), Jean-Paul Sartre (Preface) "CLAIRE: Those gloves! Those eternal gloves!..." (more)
Key Phrases: green eyes, Devil's Island

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The two plays collected in this volume represent Genet’s first attempts to analyze the mores of a bourgeois society he had previously been content simply to vilify.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; Revised edition (February 16, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080215056X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802150561
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #544,349 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Horrific , violent existentialism at its most absurd., September 6, 2000

By	John McCormack (Mahopac, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Genet based 'The Maids' on an actual event, one he felt a certain kin-ship with. In 1933 french police found Madame Lancelin and her daughter face down, in their living room, utterly mutilated. The eyes had disappeared, all teeth had been knocked out, fragments of bone and flesh were strewn about the floor, walls covered in blood. Upstairs the two servant-maids, the Papin sisters, were found naked, huddled together in one of two single beds. Immediately they confessed. Immediately, also, the papers picked up the story. The public was facinated how these two soft-spoken, mild-mannered girls, without provocation could have acted with such wild brutality. Senseless, irrational violence - Genet's speciality. He uses this story as a means to attack conformaty. A massive revolt against obedience, servitude, and the upperclass. A bloody triumph of individuality . Like other of Genet's works, it primaraly is concerned with Man's free will, or lack there-of. It is an existential story , revealing the darker sides of freedom, and the horror of the responsibility that comes with it. A tale worthy of Genet's genious. Exellent translation. Fans of Genet should also Check out Octave Mirbeau.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Knowing the score, July 10, 2005

By	calmly - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

That's 3 stars for "Deathwatch" and 7 stars for "The Maids", for an average of 5 stars. It's not that "Deathwatch" is mediocre, it's just "The Maids" is that good.

If you can't find a performance, you may still be able to see "The Maids" performed as it has been available on VHS and DVD. The American Film Theatre presented the play in movie theatres back in the 70's. Not as a loose film adaptation of the play, but retaining the play's script by filming it. Solange and Claire were played by Glenda Jackson and Susannah York. I saw it but it was so long ago all I remember was its power.

Who, when honest, likes their job and the inevitable kowtowing to the boss? B.F. Skinner in "Science and Human Behavior" wrote: "Payment of wages is an obvious advance over slavery, but the use of a standard wage as something which may be discontinued unless the employee works in a given manner is not too great an advance."

Solange and Claire at least understand the tensions in boss-employee relationships. Each realizes how easy it is to lose oneself in a role. Have we, in adjusting to meet our boss's expectations, internalized too well what it is to be the boss?

But the extent to which our need to work shapes who we are isn't something we are usually conscious of. Perhaps it would be too painful. The desire to be like the boss, the resentment of the boss, the confusion due to our jobs about who we really are: this and more is explored by Genet thru Solange and Claire. Brilliant insights, brilliant language. Our unnoticed thoughts made explicit in ceremony by these maids: we fail to see ourselves performing at all. Not like you? Read or watch again.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 stars for 'the Maids', October 6, 2004

By	Stalwart Kreinblaster "SK2008" (Xanadu) - See all my reviews

I have not read 'Deathwatch' yet but the'Maids' lived up to what I was expecting from Genet. To learn more about Genet, I would highly recommend his biography by Edmund White - this is one of the best biographies I have read.
The 'Maids' is a play in one act with three charactors. Within this act Genet captures the role-playing of the classes of society rather brilliantly. He does not capitalize on the brutality of the actual case of murder (it is based on an actual murder) but looks instead at the motivations for doing it. There is a film adaptation of the story called 'Murderous Maids' which is pretty good but focuses mainly on the act of murder - and throws in a lesbian twist.