Revenge Of The Maids

The wealth gap is soaring, traditions are waning and resentment no longer stays silent.

- Marisa Meltzer

THIS PAST JULY, in a luxury apartment complex outside New Delhi, all hell broke loose. It started when a woman accused one of her maids of stealing about $300. The maid then claimed that, as punishment, her employer wouldn’t let her go home. Word spread and a riot broke out, complete with crowds of domestics shouting, “Today we will kill her! We will kill the madam!” The employers retaliated by locking their maids out. A boom in the local takeout food industry allegedly ensued.

Disputes between employers and their domestic staff rarely erupt into such chaos, but this affair did highlight the underlying fragility of the relationship, a ticking time bomb of class conflict if not delicately managed. The stories that make it into the news are often gruesome: the infamous Papin sisters, maids in France who were convicted of murdering the wife and daughter of the family that employed them in 1933 (the events inspired several movies and Jean Genet’s 1947 play The Maids); Linda Stein, the New York real estate agent whose personal assistant confessed to beating her to death. And then there are tales of treachery: assistants accused of charging luxury items to employers’ credit cards.

To be sure, some employers have done plenty to earn resentment. In the late ’90s, The New York Times covered the saga of a Paraguayan maid, Mina Zayas, who claimed that her Upper East Side employers had underpaid her, made her work around the clock and taken her passport (all denied by the employers). “I saw it with my own eyes,” one social veteran who wished to remain anonymous whispers. “I couldn’t believe it went on. Separately, there was a very rich couple in LA — whom I always thought were very sleazy — who also stole the passports of their maids and wouldn’t let them leave.”