‘Ne vous effrayez point du costume bizarre dans lequel vous me voyez’: The Maidservant Disguise in Stendhal’s Mina de Vanghel and Barbey d’Aurevilly’s ‘Le Bonheur dans le crime’

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses how the nineteenth-century fictional heroines in Stendhal's Mina de Vanghel and Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's `Le Bonheur dans le crime' don a maidservant disguise in order to revolt against their society's oppressive mores and subsequently reverse the power dynamics between men and women, as well as servants and their masters and mistresses. By drawing on the period's non-literary discourses that likewise depicted a fascination with the servant's appearance, this article argues that Stendhal and Barbey were creating, as well as feeding into, a particular nineteenth-century socio-cultural construct of the female servant as a rebellious, sexually promiscuous figure.