56 pages • 1 hour read
The Housemaid's Secret
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Symbols & Motifs
Facial Bruises
In an attempt to convince Millie that Douglas abuses her, Wendy creates bruises on her face with makeup. Wendy learns this skill from YouTube videos and perfects them in the bathroom mirror in her bathroom in the penthouse apartment. Wendy makes them more authentic by convincing Russell to punch her, causing a nosebleed that enables her to leave a bloody handprint in the bathroom for Millie to find. These bruises are a motif that support the theme of Using Domestic Violence to Manipulate Others.
Wendy goes to a lot of trouble to convince Millie she is being abused. Not only does she make a full face of bruises the first time she allows Millie to see her whole face, but she also alters the bruises over time to make them appear they are healing. Wendy also applies a new bruise on her cheek in the aftermath of her attempt to escape Douglas. Wendy fully embraces the playacting associated with manipulating Millie into falling for Wendy’s domestic violence situation. But Wendy’s overreliance on the spectacle of facial bruises points to her entire scheme as sensationalized and not based in real experiences of domestic violence.
Domestic Secrets
Secrets are a part of both Millie’s and Wendy’s lives. For Millie, she continuously chides herself for not telling Brock about her criminal past, but she is afraid if he learns the truth, he will break up with her. For Wendy, the secrets she keeps appear to center around her husband’s abuse perpetrated against her. Millie is told that Wendy has medical issues that keep her locked in the penthouse apartment’s guest bedroom all the time, but Millie quickly figures out that Wendy hides there because Douglas abuses her and she’s hiding her bruises. Wendy simulates a secret to hide her actual secret of greed.
Domestic secrets are a motif of the novel that supports both the domestic violence theme as well as Wealth as a Motivator and Bystander Effect Versus the Everyday Hero. For Wendy, these secrets are masking the real lie, the fact that she wants to kill her husband only because he has taken his wealth away from her. For Millie, these secrets are a large part of what motivate her to help Wendy, and what drives her to become a social worker. Helping women who are being abused is a large part of Millie’s identity and by refusing to share this truth with Brock, she is revealing that deep inside, she doesn’t love him, and she is only with him because he represents something she believes she should want but doesn’t.
Bracelet
While Millie works for the Garricks, Douglas gives Wendy a bracelet that is inscribed with words that suggest that Douglas sees Wendy as his possession. When Millie confronts Wendy about the abuse, Wendy gives the expensive bracelet to Millie, asking her to get rid of it because Wendy sees it as a token to buy her silence regarding the abuse. Millie takes it, planning to sell it for rent, but the police find it and believe it to be a gift from her lover, Douglas Garrick.
The bracelet is a symbol of Douglas’s control over Wendy. As the novel progresses, the bracelet begins to symbolize other things, such as Wendy’s manipulation of Millie as well as Millie’s hope it will pay for her rent in a time of struggle. Finally, the bracelet represents Millie’s lies not only to the police, but to Brock as he comes to believe she was having an affair with Douglas Garrick. When Wendy eventually reveals she bought the bracelet herself with her own money, and that Douglas had nothing to do with it, it becomes prop in her scheme to kill Douglas for his money. This bracelet that is worth a great deal of money exchanges hands often and becomes discarded, forgotten, a symbol of Wendy’s greed and Millie’s innocence wrapped up in one.
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