Behind the Scenes of the Daily Life. The Servants’ Gaze from Proust to Cuarón

  • Elisabetta Abignente University of Naples Federico II
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i3.6544
Keywords: Servants/Maids, Everyday life, Point of view, Gaze, Family Novel

Abstract

Placed at the margins of family life, servants are the accurate witnesses of its dynamics, meticulous set designers of its environments, proud guardians of its secrets, and solemn ministers of its rituals. Therefore, they offer a privileged gaze, from inside and from below, through which to observe and to narrate the rhythms and spaces of everyday life. Focusing on their role, in the context of a broader investigation of the representations of the everyday life, means trying to immerse oneself in domestic interiors and assume the point of view, quite peculiar, of those who live there, or better of those who set them for the life of others. Starting from these premises, the article aims to analyse the figure of the servants, in an intermedial perspective, retracing some of its significant twentieth-century and contemporary incarnations: from Proust’s Françoise to Cuarón’s Cleo, passing through Virginia Woolf's faithful Crosby, the uncanny figures of Anna Édes (Kosztolányi), Emerenc (Szabó) and Marta (Kupermann), up to the multi-faceted and layered staff of Downton Abbey.

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Author Biography

Elisabetta Abignente, University of Naples Federico II

Fixed-term Researcher in Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature and qualified as Associate Professor in the same field. Her research interests corcern the representation of waiting in the XXth century novel (Quando il tempo si fa lento. L'attesa amorosa nel romanzo del Novecento, Carocci 2014), translingual writers (In eredità l'altrove. Andreï Makine all'incrocio tra due mondi, Ad est dell'Equatore 2018), inter artes studies (chapter La letteratura e le altre arti in Letterarature Comparate, ed. F. de Cristofaro, Carocci 2014), and genealogical novel, with a particular attention to the family memoir. She has been Principal Investigator of the STAR 2014 project «The Family Novel» and has edited, with E. Canzaniello, a monographic issue of «Enthymema» on the same topic. She has published articles and essays on Proust, Mann, García Márquez, Ginzburg, Barthes, Tondelli, Ernaux.

Published
2019-12-27
How to Cite
AbignenteE. (2019). Behind the Scenes of the Daily Life. The Servants’ Gaze from Proust to Cuarón. SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (3), 119-145. https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i3.6544
Issue
No 3 (2019): The forms and the days. Representations of everyday life in literature, audiovisual, visual and performing arts
Section
Monographic section I

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