Story: Like Mother, Like Daughter

LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER

An epistolary tale by The Nerdly,  based on three vignettes in French by Hanna, femme de chambre

Dear Hanna,

You asked in your last letter how I came to be Gabrielle's  full-time maid. I hope this will answer your question.

Gabrielle and I were roommates at college, where we played D/s  games together. We especially liked to play the game of mistress and maid. Gabrielle was always the mistress, and I, always the  maid. Since we were impoverished college students, my maid's uniform was blue jeans with a white tee shirt, and Gabrielle's mistress clothing was the same.

As you know, Gabrielle moved to Strasbourg after college to take a position with the École Nationale d'Administration, the ENA. I accepted a junior management position with a firm in Paris. Having  so enjoyed the D/s games we had played in college, we agreed to continue them after graduation. To play the game, I travelled to  Strasbourg on the weekends to serve as Gabrielle's maid. She  expected me to wear a proper maid's uniform and carry a serving tray, and also to act as a chambermaid and iron her clothes -- in other words, to serve as her maid of all work. We played this game for two years. There were occasional aggravations, but I didn't mind. I was always able to juggle my two lives so that I  met the high expectations of both Gabrielle and my boss at my "real" job.

Story: The Real Story of Cinderella

The Real Story of Cinderella

by Lady Charlotte

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess called Ella. In fact, she was the most beautiful princess in the whole world, and one day, a handsome prince came riding by, and fell head over heels in love with her, and proposed to her on the spot. And Princess Ella accepted. This was because the handsome prince was not only handsome, but also very rich and powerful, and Ella was a total snob.

Once she had married the handsome prince, she became even snobbier. In fact, it was not long before she was the haughtiest, rudest, most arrogant member of the royal family that the poor servants in the palace had ever had to deal with. Ella was UNSPEAKABLY horrid! But the people that Ella was beastliest of all to were not the maids or the footmen, but her own step-mother and step-sisters. They had come to live with her in the palace when Ella had got married, and now they were having the most horrible time. It broke the step-mother's heart, for she found herself quite helpless. Both she and her daughters were very humble and sweet, and naturally would never have dared answer the imperious Ella back.

One day, the handsome Prince, Ella's husband, decided to throw a ball. This was to be a very important occasion, for all the other Princes from around the world were being invited. The handsome Prince hoped to be voted Prince of the Year, a title which was due to be awarded that very night, and the ball was designed to wipe the floor with the opposition. Because Ella was so beautiful and haughty, he hoped that having her on his arm would help him to clinch the title. Naturally, Ella hoped so too.

Story: Arriving in Milan

ARRIVING IN MILAN
By Lady Charlotte
Part 1

At the airport, standing in the passport queue, I see a cleaning woman. She is in marked contrast to the beautifully dressed travelers, surrounded by their expensive luggage, waiting to catch their flights to exotic destinations round the world. The cleaning woman looks weary. She wears a drab, ugly, blue uniform dress. Dusters hang from her pockets. She pushes a trolley loaded with buckets, detergents and mops. The effort causes her to sweat. The uniform clings to her body. A name tag identifies her. I am too far away to read it. I guess that it will not be the name of an Italian, for the cleaner looks foreign. Her skin is dark brown, except for her hands, which are red. Her knees too, I guess, beneath her skirt, must be red. She looks as though she has spent long hours on them, scrubbing floors. What would it be like, I wonder, to be such a woman, so drab amidst such style? I glance at the passport queue, ahead and behind me. Full of tourists, business people, Italian and English. For the Italians, fashion is a religion, and for the English a heresy, but everyone, all the same, is marked by the clothes that they wear. Everyone looks rich. Everyone except for the cleaner. I look back at her. She is gone. I feel a tightness in my stomach, a golden touch of shame. I show my passport. The officer waves me through.

Caption: Who's The Maid Now?

Victoria was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.  An heiress to the $400 million fortune that her aristocratic parents left her, she never had to work and was surrounded day and night by people willing to do anything she wanted. Life was good.  But it also lacked excitement for the 20-year old beauty, who saw her pampered existence as extremely boring. Now,  if only she could experience a different life, where everyone wouldn't just see her as a spoiled rich girl with nothing to show for herself other than her millions...

Louis Vuitton Models in Traditional Maid Uniforms

Since luxury fashion brands are associated with high-society living it makes all the sense in the world for them to use maids in their advertising campaigns. Nobody does it better than Louis Vuitton, that dresses its models in traditional French maid dresses for its store openings and fashion shows.

 

Caption: One of These Women

Even those who used to know Lady Constance as the belle of the ball would find it very hard to recognize her in the rough-looking scullery maid that she has become. It wasn't just her plain hairstyle or her unflattering maid's uniform or the calluses on her hands - an unmistakable sign that she was a member of the working classes. The change was deeper than that.

How Vulgar: Maids and Their Low-Class Speech

I have to admit it: I am a fan of old etiquette books and household-management manuals. There is no shortage of them online and they offer an interesting glimpse into the life that is long gone. Even though I have a sneaking suspicion that much of what is in these books has little relation to real attitudes and behaviors, it is not hard to imagine a social climber of the time actually reading these manuals to learn how to dress, walk and talk like a real lady, or an inexperienced wife learning how to interact with her household staff. Or a lady's maid learning a thing or two about how to serve her mistress best.

One particular aspect of the social downgrade transformation I have always found exciting was adopting a coarser and less educated manner of speech typical of the lower classes. Our speech is as much a part of us as the way we look and is, arguably, even more important in determining how we are perceived by people around us. That makes it a powerful instrument in describing a social drop or rise. While most stories dealing with upper/lower class transformation ignore the topic or only mention it in passing, there are some excellent examples of writers paying a great deal of attention to that. Emma Finn's writings, in particular Criminal Record, come to mind. Monica Graz's Domestication of a Parisian Bourgeois is another excellent example: the main character actually learns how to speak with a coarse Portuguese accent to fully embrace her immigrant maid persona. Another great example, offering the most painstaking description of learning how to speak like a low-class character I have come across, is "A Certain Perception'' by Angel Charysse. While the story doesn't deal with maids, its description of the voluntary change from an upper-class man into a dirty-talking and uncultured transsexual hooker is among the hottest (as well as most detailed) in transformation fiction.