Unmasking the Loyal Maidservant in Germinie Lacerteux

Abstract

This article argues that by unmasking the secret life of the fictional maidservant, Germinie Lacerteux, the Goncourt brothers develop and describe a nineteenth-century social imaginary of the rebellious female servant. The rebellious maidservant emerges in the nineteenth-century social imagination through an interconnected web of discourses emanating from the period’s literature, faits divers , household manuals and criminology reports. By analysing Germinie Lacerteux in conjunction with nineteenth-century household manuals, this article explores how the Goncourts contributed to this interconnected web of discourses that created