厨娘日记 (1900)

《厨娘日记》（法语：Le Journal d'une femme de chambre），又名 《女生日记》或《女仆日记》， 是奥克塔夫·米尔博于1900年创作的小说。这部作品在1891-92年间以连载形式在《L'Écho de Paris》里发表。该作品被完善了以后，于1900年被发表在 “La revue blanche”里。

作品介绍

这部作品描写的是一名名叫塞莱丝汀的女仆的日记。她的第一任雇主是一个恋物癖，很迷恋她的靴子。当塞莱丝汀发现这个雇主死了的时候，他嘴里塞着她的靴子。塞莱丝汀紧接着成了一对中产阶级夫妇的仆人。她发现自己似乎卷入了雇主婚姻中的权力斗争。最后，塞莱丝汀成为了一个中产阶级咖啡厅女主人，这次换成她虐待仆人。

评论

作为一名自由论者的作家，米尔博把说话权给了一名女仆，这是颇有争议的选择。读者从女仆的眼里看到上层社会的黑暗、当权人的虚伪，还有中产阶级的堕落。米尔博的这部作品撕掉了上层社会的虚伪面具，揭露了他们虚善与变态的一面。

多年来，塞莱丝汀一直服务于富裕的家族里。比如，她曾在诺曼底一个叫 Lanlaire 的家庭做女仆，并见识了这个家族通过欺诈行为而得到财富。在有钱人家中的经历使她感觉到：再无耻不体面的人也没有伪君子无耻。

米尔博虽然谴责雇佣仆人是一种现代化的奴隶制，但是他并没有把下层社会的人写得过于感伤 ，因为被雇主剥削的仆人们把自己也从意识形态上给孤立了。

在这部作品里，背景介绍是零散片段性的，时间是跳跃性的，写作风格是不连贯的。米尔博放弃了纪实的客观性还有叙事的时间顺序性。这些特点都说明这部作品与现实主义小说有本质性的区别。

电影

《女仆心机》（2015），班诺·贾克导演，蕾雅·瑟杜和万桑·蓝东主演。

The Diary of a Chambermaid (French: Le Journal d'une femme de chambre) is a 1900 Decadent novel by Octave Mirbeau, published during the Dreyfus affair. First published in serialized form in L'Écho de Paris from 1891 to 1892, Mirbeau's novel was reworked and polished before appearing in the Dreyfusard journal La Revue Blanche in 1900.

Plot

The novel presents itself as the diary of Mademoiselle Célestine R., a chambermaid. Her first employer fetishizes her boots, and she later discovers the elderly man dead, with one of her boots stuffed into his mouth. Later on, Célestine becomes the maid of an upper class couple, Lanlaire, and is perfectly aware that she is entangled in the power struggles of their marriage. Célestine ends by becoming a café hostess, who mistreats her servants in turn.

Commentary

As an anarchist writer, Octave Mirbeau chose to narrate the novel from the perspective of a maidservant, Célestine: a perspective considered unconventional for the period. Through Célestine observations ,often made through keyholes, the novel exposes the private conduct of the upper classes critiquing what Mirbeau characterized as the moral failings of the dominant social strata. The work depicts members of high society as outwardly respectable while portraying their private lives as marked by hypocrisy and moral corruption.

Ending up in a Norman town at the home of the Lanlaires, with their grotesque family name, who owe their unjustifiable wealth to their respective 'honourable' parents' swindlings, she evokes, as she recalls her memories, all the jobs that she has done for years in the swankiest households, and draws a conclusion that the reader is invited to make his own: «However vile the riff-raff may be, they are never as vile as decent people.» (« Si infâmes que soient les canailles, ils ne le sont jamais autant que les honnêtes gens. »)

Octave Mirbeau denounces domestic service as a modern form of slavery. However, he offers no sentimentalised image of the underclass, as servants exploited by their masters are ideologically alienated themselves: « D'être domestique, on a ça dans le sang... ».

With its fractured exposition, its temporal dislocations, its clashing styles, and varying forms, Mirbeau's novel breaks with the conventions of the realistic novel and relinquishes all claims to documentary objectivity and narrative linearity.

Adaptations

Film

The novel has been loosely adapted for cinema multiple times:

1916, a Russia film, Dnevnik gornitchnoi (Дневник горничной) by M. Martov.

1946, an American film, The Diary of a Chambermaid by Jean Renoir, starring Paulette Goddard.

1964, Le Journal d’une femme de chambre by Luis Buñuel, in French, starring Jeanne Moreau, Georges Géret and Michel Piccoli.

2015, Journal d’une femme de chambre by Benoît Jacquot, in French, starring Léa Seydoux and Vincent Lindon.

2026, Journal d’une femme de chambre by Radu Jude, in French and Romanian, starring Ana Dumitrașcu, Marie Rivière and Mélanie Thierry.

Stage

It was also made into a play by Andre Heuse, André de Lorde, and Thielly Nores.

Plenty of theatrical adaptations have been made during the last 20 years, in French, but also in Italian, English, Spanish, Dutch and German.

In 2004, a new American theatrical adaptation of Diary of A Chambermaid produced by Antonia Fairchild and directed by Adrian Giurgea, had its world-premiere in New York City.