Maid to Order

1. Consider what audience this piece was written for. What assumptions does Ehrenreich make about this audience?


It seems that Ehrenreich wrote this chapter for those who hire maids in order to make them more aware of the industry's reality. She does this by writing about the physical and societal affects of hiring maids, as well as an idea of the profession from a maid's perspective, like on page 481 where she shares her description of a ghostlike existence during her experience as a maid, "she would remain completely unaware of your existence unless you were to crawl under that table and start gnawing at their ankles. The quotation, "It's a different world down there below knee-level, one few adults voluntarily enter," implies that she thinks the majority of the audience's understanding of the maid profession doesn't go beyond the fact that maids clean houses. Ehrenreich also seems to stress the fact that the audience is unaware of the affect of a parent hiring a maid or nanny because she provides many examples, of awful things kids have done, like the boy who kicked his nanny for refusing to make sandwiches, and embarrassing things kids have said, like "look mommy a baby maid." She also explains long term effects of hiring maids, such as "domestic incompetence," as well as the increase in "callousness and solipsism" of "the served."