Spanking the Maid by Robert Coover
"Spanking the Maid" by Robert Coover is a provocative narrative that explores the dynamics of power and servitude through the interactions between a maid and her employer in his bedroom. The work, originally published in 1979, is structured as a series of thirty-nine fragmented scenes, resembling a play or film, which alternate between the perspectives of the maid and the master. This shifting viewpoint highlights the repetitive nature of their roles and tasks, with the maid striving for perfection in her duties while facing punishment for her perceived failures.
The story draws inspiration from Victorian guides for domestic servants, presenting a cycle where the maid's cleaning efforts and the master's disciplinary actions are portrayed with increasing intensity. Coover’s text raises questions about authority, submission, and the blurred lines between fantasy and reality. Importantly, the narrative does not provide a resolution; instead, it leaves the characters trapped in their roles, trapped in a loop of expectation and compliance. This continuous cycle emphasizes themes of inevitability and existential despair, inviting readers to reflect on the complexities of human relationships and societal norms.
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Spanking the Maid by Robert Coover
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1981
Type of work: Novella
The Work
Originally published in The Iowa Review in 1979 as a long short story, Spanking the Maid was collected in Best American Short Stories of 1981 and Best American Short Stories of the 1980’s under the title “A Working Day.” It was later published with only minor changes as a novella as Spanking the Maid (with illustrations in 1981 and without illustrations in 1982).
Spanking the Maid describes a day in the life of a maid, “she,” and her employer or “master,” “he.” They are the only two characters in a single setting: the master’s bedroom, which the maid comes to clean. The story is told through a series of thirty-nine fragments much like scenes in a stage play or a film.
In the first fragment, the maid enters and then enters again, much as an actor might exit the stage to redo a scene. The bed is empty, the master not present. The second fragment is told from the master’s point of view. In general, the remaining sections alternate point of view from servant to master and back again. The actions, though essentially the same, change and expand incrementally with each new fragment. The maid clearly seeks to do her duty, to clean the master’s bedroom suite properly, with proper demeanor. Sometimes the room is empty, sometimes the master is in bed or in the shower. The two talk, or they do not.
She seeks, and cannot attain, perfection. For that, she must be punished, and just as her attempts at cleaning reiterate themselves but change over time, so too does her punishment. He uses a belt, a rod, his hand, a whip, a switch, a leather strap, a hairbrush, according to the instructions in “the manuals.” The manuals in question refer to Victorian guides for domestic servants on which Coover based this story, though he has taken the repetition of those guides to new extremes. Indeed, the repetition and its variations end only because the text ends. There is no resolution. The characters are doomed to repeat endlessly their assigned roles and tasks. The reader, too, is contained within the paradox of the text and is unable to distinguish between what is fantasy and what is reality.
Bibliography
Andersen, Richard. Robert Coover. Boston: Twayne, 1981.
Cope, Jackson. Robert Coover’s Fictions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
Evenson, Brian. Understanding Robert Coover. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
Gado, Frank. First Person: Conversations on Writers and Writing. Schenectady, N.Y.: Union College Press, 1973.
Gordon, Lois G. Robert Coover: The Universal Fictionmaking Process. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.
Kennedy, Thomas E. Robert Coover: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1992.
McCaffery, Larry. “As Guilty as the Rest of Them: An Interview with Robert Coover.” Critique 42, no. 1 (Fall, 2000): 115-125.
McCaffery, Larry. The Metafictional Muse: The Work of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, and William H. Gass. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982.
Maltby, Paul. Dissident Postmodernists: Barthleme, Coover, Pynchon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
Pughe, Thomas. Comic Sense: Reading Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, Philip Roth. Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1994.