51 pages • 1 hour read
The Maid's Diary
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Symbols & Motifs
Tricksters
Tricksters are a recurring motif in the novel, especially relating to the theme of False Narratives and Identities. The novel shows Kit posting images of herself surrounded by wealth and luxury, using the handle @foxandcrow as a clue that she is tricking her followers. Both the fox and crow are tricksters in folklore: In her tiny apartment, she feeds a one-legged crow who visits her windowsill. The novel also draws on the motif of the trickster through the Halloween “trick or treat” setting, with its themes of jeopardy and disguise. Kit’s confrontation with the Rittenbergs takes place on this holiday associated with masks and trickery. Kit’s amateur dramatics also support this theme as she is constantly pretending to be other people, using physical disguises as well as acting skills and psychological trickery.
Kit is the main trickster in The Maid’s Diary and the novel’s ending shows that she has also tricked the reader when her multiple personas are revealed after her escape. As her diary reads, “The trickster is trying to poke a stick at your pretensions, your worldviews, your illusions, your false beliefs, your rigid ‘rules.’” (291). The novel suggests that these words apply to the reader themselves.
The Diary
Kit’s diary features prominently in the novel as a symbol of identity, expression, and deception. The diary is immediately made central by the novel’s title, suggesting that it will be essential to the denouement. As a first-person narrative, and the only one in the novel, the diary is representative of the unreliable narrator, a key technique of this novel and of thrillers more widely.
The diary both reveals and hides Kit’s identity. In its pages, Kit describes the different versions of herself that have surfaced at different periods of her life. Because her memory of the assault on her is so fragmented, her identity seems likewise disjointed. Kit has been an insecure teenager, a talented actor, a maid, and a snoop. She also proves to be a master detective when she assembles all the pieces of gang rape puzzle back together. The facts are all recorded in the diary. Words function as a means of stitching back her psyche and grounding her in the real world again. While the original diary was meant to be planted where the police could find it, Kit starts a new journal after the Rittenberg affair is concluded. She changes her name to Kat and begins to recognize the therapeutic value of writing down her thoughts:
I met the hidden Kat on the underside of my consciousness. She spoke to me from the distorted fun house mirrors in the Jungian tunnels of my soul. Kat wanted to be seen (356).
The people who committed crimes against Kit wanted her to disappear. The journal brought her back to the land of the living.
Gaslighting
As described in the Background, The Maid’s Diary draws on the method of emotional and psychological control known as gaslighting. The word and concept are a recurring motif throughout the novel, helping to drive the narrative’s moral arc and its mystery plot. The use of the word shifts depending on the character and circumstances, revealing gaslighting’s reliance on perspective and false narrative.
Both antagonists Daisy and Jon use the term when they feel victimized although both have deliberately used the technique to their advantage when it suited their purposes. After Daisy receives the threatening Chucky Doll messages, she assumes these have come from Charley Waters, asking, “Are you gaslighting me?” (196). Daisy’s use of the term here creates dramatic irony and points to her culpability, as Daisy accuses Charley because she herself stalked Charley in an effort to gaslight her. Similarly, after Jon realizes that Mia has set him up, he thinks he is “terrorized, gaslighted.” His words highlight his hypocrisy and self-interest as he and his friends terrorized and gaslighted Kit after their rape of her.
The novel also explores the ways in which the protagonists use gaslighting as a form of revenge and personal justice. Boon acknowledges that Kit was “Gaslighting [the Norths]. Messing with their heads” (342). Kit herself admits this in her new diary: “Kat wanted the psychological—gaslighting—effects. She wanted to sow doubt in Jon’s head. She wanted him to fret about what really happened on a deeply personal and sexual level” (360). Her deliberate adoption of Jon’s own method of control supports the novel’s message of alternative justice and self-assertion. It suggests that the punishment fits the crime, making Kit’s revenge a moral act.
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