The Newspaper of a chambermaid

the Newspaper of a chambermaid is a Romance French of Octave Mirbeau, published in Carpenter-Fasquelle in July 1900. Three adaptations were made by it to the cinema.

The novel

Crisis with the Business Dreyfus

A first version was published in serial in the Echo of Paris , from October 20th, 1891 to April 26th, 1892, whereas the novelist passes through a moral and literary serious attack and neglects to polish his serials to publish them in volume. A second version, strongly altered, appeared in the supporter of Dreyfus white Revue during the winter 1900.

The shape of the newspaper, which allows the juxtaposition of the sequences, the constant passage of the present with spent to the liking of the memories, and mixes it tons and of the kinds, contributes to break with the linearity of the traditional novel, the priority of the intrigue and especially with the alleged objectivity of the novels which want to be realistic.

Rot of the rich

Mirbeau calls on a maidservant, Célestine, which is already subversive in oneself, and, through its glance which perceives the world by the keyhole, it makes us discover the nauseous lower parts of the beautiful world, the “bumps morals” of the dominant classes and turpitudes of the middle-class company that it pourfend. Failed in a Norman borough, at Lanlaire, with the grotesque patronym, which owe their unjustifiable richness with the filouteries of theirs honourable respective parents, it evokes, with the wire of its memories, all the places which it made since of the years, in the most crested houses, and a conclusion draws some that the reader is invited to endorse: “So infamous that are the rabbles, they are it never as much as the decent people. ”

The social hell

The account, eminently demystificator, constitute a manner of exploration teaching of the social hell, where reign the law of the strongest, hardly camouflaged by the grimaces of the rich. Modern form of slavery, the condition of the servants and people in service , as it was said, is denounced by the chambrière, that the novelist equips with a pitiless clearness: “It is claimed that there is no more slavery… Ah! here is a good joke, for example… And the servants, who are thus, if not of the slaves? … Slaves in fact, with all that slavery comprises of moral cheapness, inevitable corruption, engendreuse revolt of hatreds. ” The servant is “a disparate” being, “a monstrous human hybrid”, which “is not any more of the people, from where it leaves”, without being for all that “the middle-class where it saw and where it tends”. If all the serfs of modern times are condemned to instability, overexploitation and perpetual humiliations, the chambermaids are in addition treated like sexual workers with residence, which is often the first step towards the prostitution.

But Mirbeau does not nourish for as much any illusion on the capacities of Révolte of the domestic race, which is alienated ideologically and almost always corrupted by its Masters: Célestine itself, in spite of its clearness and its dislike, ends by becoming main in its turn and scolding its good, in small coffee from Cherbourg where it followed the gardener-coachman Joseph, anti-semite and sadist, enriched by the daring flight by silverware by Lanlaire, and of which it was convinced that he raped and assassinated a little girl…

Nausea

Beyond this revolt, without a future, against a hypocritical and unjust social order, the newspaper of the chambrière testifies to an existential nausea which is that of the novelist. Quite front Sartre, Mirbeau indeed gets busy to cause a true existential nausea on our premises and clarifies the tragedy of the human condition by painting the daily life in all that it has of vacuum, of vulgar and of sordid.

But, by the magic of the style and thanks to the help of the words, which avenge us for all our evils, the novel-discharge system appears paradoxically tonic and jubilatoire and nausea seems the condition of a rise.

Film adaptations and theatrical

the Newspaper of a chambermaid was carried three times at the screen: in 1916, in Russia, by Mr. Martov, under the title Dnevnik gornitchnoi ( Дневникгорничной ); in 1946, by Jean Renoir, in the United States and in English, under the title Diary off has Chambermaid , with Paulette Goddard and James Meredith; and finally the Newspaper of a chambermaid , in 1964 and French, by the Spaniard Shine Buñuel, with Jeanne Moreau, Georges Géret and Michel Piccoli in the main roles. It acts, in the last both cases, of very free adaptations of the novel, that of Jean Renoir being particularly inaccurate.

The novel, which lends itself admirably to dramatizing, also gave place, throughout the world, with quantities of theatrical adaptations in all kinds of languages, generally in one woman show : more than thirty could be entered since 1990! Most famous, and which turned longest, starting from 1982, is that of Jacques Destoop, with Genevieve Fontanel in the role of Célestine.

External bonds

'' the Newspaper of a chambermaid ''
Pierre Michel, Foreword of the '' Journal of a chambermaid ''
Pierre Michel, '' Bibliographie of Octave Mirbeau ''
Carmen Boustani, " The Interval in '' the Newspaper of a chambermaid '' ".
Maria Carrilho-Jézéquel, '' the Newspaper of a chambermaid '': passion, satire and truth ".
Gaetan Davoult, the Writing of waste in '' the Newspaper of a chambermaid '' ".
Gaetan Davoult, " Waste and corporality in '' the Newspaper of a chambermaid '' ".
Serge Duret, '' the Newspaper of a chambermaid '', or the redécouverte of the picaresque model ".
Serge Duret, '' the Newspaper of a chambermaid '' work baroque? ".
Aleksandra Gruzinska, Humiliation, hatred and revenge: the laughter of Célestine ".
Anita Staron, '' Constraint in blood '' - the Image of domesticity in the work of Octave Mirbeau "
Gabriella Tegyey, Claudine and Célestine: forms of the newspaper and its operation ".
Robert Ziegler, Art in Mirbeau' S '' the Newspaper of a chambermaid '' ".

Quotations

… this sadness and this comic to be a man. Sadness which makes laugh, comic which makes cry the high hearts.
It is not my fault if the hearts, which one tears off the veils and that one shows with naked, exhale a so strong putrid smell.
Ah! those which do not perceive, of the human beings, which appearance and that, only, the external forms dazzle, cannot suspect only beautiful people, of what the high society dirty and is rotted.
Ah! in the toilets, as the masks fall! … How are exhausted and are lézardent the proudest frontages! …
If infamous that are the rabbles, they are it never as much as the decent people.
To be domestic, there is that in blood…
The idea of death, the presence of died with the beds of lust, is terrible, a mysterious excitation with pleasure.
At home, any crime - the murder mainly - has secret correspondences with the love… Eh well, yes, there! … a beautiful crime me seizure like a beautiful male…

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