1910: Born in Paris and abandoned by unwed mother
1916: Placed in foster care in a small village
1920: Fingered for petty thefts
1923: Leaves village school with highest grades
1924: Apprenticed to Parisian typographer and runs away; sent
to live with a blind composer, from whom he steals; sent to
reform school
Feb. 1933: Lea and Christine Papin murder their female
employer (Mme Lancelin) and her daughter in Le
Mans, France, mutilating the bodies afterwards;
authorities find the 2 sisters in bed together
Dec.
1933: Psycholoanalyst Jacques Lacan writes:
"Homosexuality, sado-masochistic perversion
and such are the instinctive disorders the existence and (as we have
tried to show in our work) the genetic signification of which
psychoanalysts alone, in this case, have been able to reveal. We
should acknowledge that the sisters appear to bring to these
correlations what one could call a crude confirmation: sadism is
evident in the maneuvers executed upon the victims, and what
significance cannot be found in the exclusive affection of the two
sisters, the mystery of their life, the eccentricities of their
cohabitation, and their fearful reconciliation in the same bed after
the crime?" (Lacan n. pag.).
1936: Deserts army and begins European wanderings
1938: Caught as deserter but discharged for amorality and
mental imbalance
1938-42: Spate of petty thefts followed by brief imprisonments
1943: Begins writing his first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers,
while in prison for theft
1944: Cocteau and Sartre, admirers of his work, get him
amnesty for his criminal activities
1947: The Maids (Les
bonnes) Athénée Theatre, Paris
1949: The Thief’s Journal
1950: Un Chant D’Amour
(A Song of Love,
silent film); Deathwatch
1956: The Balcony
1958: The Blacks
1961/66: The Screens
1965: Refused an American visa for sexual deviancy
1970s: Supporter of Black Panthers, PLO, prisoners’ rights,
and Arab immigrants’ rights
1979: Diagnosed with throat cancer
1986: Died in Paris but buried in Morocco
Claire (clear, light, but also oyster bed in French)
Solange (sol = soil; ange = angel)
Monsieur (pronounced miss-syr) = Mr. / Sir (polite
form of address in French for respectable people), whom Madame
imagines being sent to Devil's Island, a
famous prison colony in French Guinea
Madame = Mrs. / Madam (polite form of address in French
for respectable people)
Claire-Solange
Claire-Madame
Solange-Claire
Solange-Madame
Mario the milkman
Structure of the Play
I. "Ceremony" of Solange playing Claire, and Claire playing
Madame (Genet 49)
II. Monsieur Calls
III. Madame returns
IV. Final Ritual (Black Mass?) of Solange and Claire
1.1 Frechtmann translation: "Solange: Go on, be sarcastic,
work me up! Go on, be sarcastic! Nobody loves me! Nobody loves us!
Claire: She does, she loves us. She's kind. Madame
is kind. Madame adores us" (Genet 52).
"Solange: Ironise, afin de m'exiciter. Ironise, va! Personne
ne m'aime! Personne ne nous aime!
Claire: Elle, elle nous aime. Elle est bonne. Madame estbonne!
Madame nous adore" (Genet, "Les bonnes" 149).
éclair
has interesting if not tangentially related meanings
3. Other
Translations
3.1 Frechtmann translation: “All that you’ll ever know is your
own baseness” (Genet 43).
French: Je grandis davantage pour te réduire et t’exalter.
Lane’s translation (literal): I ennoble myself the more to
diminish and exalt you.
3.2 Frechtmann: “Let me get it out of my system” (Genet 50).
French: “Que je me vide!”
Literal: “Let me annul myself!”
3.3 Frechtmann translation: “When slaves love one
another, it’s not love” (Genet 61).
French: “S’aimer
dans le dégout,
ce n’est pas s’aimer.”
Lane’s translation (literal): “To love each other in such disgust
is not to love.”
Questions
1. Are Claire and Solange really, as Madame suggests, a ‘family’?
Or are they, as was suspected of the Papin sisters, lovers?
2. What’s the significance of the ending?
3. In the original production, Genet insisted that The Maids be
played
by men (playing women). How does this cross-dressing change the
meaning of the sisters’ game?
Quotes
Genet: "Without a doubt, one of the functions of art is to
substitute the effectiveness of beauty for religious faith. A
least this beauty has the power of a poem, that is, of a
crime" (qtd. in Federman 138).
Genet: "Poetry is the art of using dung and making you eat it"
(qtd. in Federman 139).
Novelist André Gide: “We should note one thing: [the
play] is not a plea on behalf of maids. I suppose there is a
union for domestic workers—that’s not our concern” (qtd. in
Lane 880).
- 1943: Being and
Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant,
philosophy); The Flies (Les Mouches, play)
- 1946: “Existentialism is a Humanism” (L'existentialisme est
un humanisme)
- 1947: No Exit
(play): “Hell is other people.”
- 1952: St. Genet, Actor and Martyr (Saint Genet,
comédien et martyr, essay)
- 1964: The Words (Les
Mots, autobiography); awarded Nobel Prize but declined
it
- Married to feminist Simone de Beauvoir
Whirligig--OED
1. a. Name of various toys that are whirled, twirled, or spun
round; spec. (a) a top or teetotum (cf. GIG n.1
1); (b) a toy consisting of a small spindle
turned by means of a string; (c) a toy with four
arms like miniature windmill-sails, which whirl round when it is
moved through the air.
2. Applied to various mechanical contrivances having a whirling or
rotatory movement; spec. (a) an instrument of
punishment formerly used, consisting of a large cage suspended so
as to turn on a pivot; (b) a roundabout or
merry-go-round.
3. a. gen. and fig., in various applications: (a) Something that
is continually whirling, or in constant movement or activity of
any kind; (b) a fantastic notion, a crotchet (obs.); (c)
circling course, revolution (of time or events); (d) a lively or
irregular proceeding, an antic; (e) a circling movement, or
condition figured as such, a whirl.
b. A fickle, inconstant, giddy, or flighty person (cf. GIG n.1
4); also, one who turns round or moves about actively, as in a
dance.
4. A water-beetle of the family Gyrinidæ, esp. the common
species Gyrinus natator, found in large numbers circling rapidly
over the surface of the water in ponds and ditches. Also whirligig
beetle.
Signifier
woman (femininity)
Signified
"Anything can be a woman: a flower, and animal, an
inkwell" (Sartre 10).
Writing Activities
WRITE AN OBITUARY FOR CLAIRE FOR A
SPECIFIC AUDIENCE (FRENCH LOCAL PAPER, MONTCLARION, MAIDS’ WEEKLY,
POLICE REPORT, ETC.).
Works Cited
Federman, Raymond. "Jean Genet: The Theater of Hate." Genet: a
Collection of Critical Essays. Eds. Peter Brooks and Joseph
Halpern. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1979. 129-45.
Genet, Jean. "The Maids." The Maids and Deathwatch.
Trans. B. Frechtmann. NY: Grove, 1982. 33-100.
- - -. "Les bonnes." Oeuvres complètes. Paris:
Gallimard, 1968. 139-177.
