Date of Award
2012
First Advisor
Asma Abbas
Second Advisor
Laurence Wallach
Third Advisor
Anne O'Dwyer
Abstract
This thesis explores politics, theatre, and history through Genet's play The Maids. Written after the end of the occupation, The Maids epitomizes this post-traumatic moment in French history. The Maids has, however, most of ten been read in order to redeem the politics of the following decades and interpreted as celebrating the sexual liberation of the invididuated bourgeois subject. Due consideration has not been given to issues of violence and representation. Taking post-occupation France as an historical moment, I attend to these issues that I feel have been missed in other readings, and proceed to read in The Maids some features of both how France was redeemed and what end this redemption served. I locate the play in its historical scene and bring out various aspects connecting the life of the maids and the recovery from war.
Recommended Citation
Fogelson, Ari, "Murder Motifs: Reading Politics and History in Genet's The Maids" (2012). Senior Theses. 669.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/sr-theses/669
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