The Maids
Maids, The (Les Bonnes) Author: Jean Genet
First Performance: 1947, Paris
Published: 1948; rev. 1954, 1958
First English Translation: 1954
Genre: Drama in 1 act; French prose
Setting: Bedroom in a Paris apartment, c.1947
Cast: 3f
A lady gives orders to her servant Claire to prepare her clothes. The servant is by turns obsequious and dominating, while the lady sneers cruelly at Claire's ugliness and at her infatuation for the milkman. The lady says that she has denounced her lover, a criminal, to the police. Suddenly an alarm clock goes off, and the two women huddle together fearfully. The servant is in fact Solange, and the ‘Madame’ turns out to be her younger sister Claire. They are the two maids of Madame, a young high-class kept woman. These two ugly, shabby spinsters...
[The entire page is 458 words long]
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