This book demonstrates the symbolic centrality of servants in Brazilian intellectual discourse (fiction, memoirs, conduct literature, and journalism) over the course of one century-from the aftermath of the abolition of slavery (1888) to late twentieth-cen

Drawing from a variety of historical sources, theory, and fictional and non-fictional production, this book addresses the cultural imaginary of domestic servants in modern Brazil and demonstrates maids' symbolic centrality to shifting notions of servitude, subordination, femininity, and domesticity.