In the bourgeois imaginary, the maid’s room is a territory of exclusion. Although it is part of the house or apartment, this substitute for the slave quarters is a place where the bosses rarely enter and care little about it. In architecture, it is equivalent to the myth that the maid is “part of the family”, but a separate part, which must remain segregated from the other rooms, from which she is separated by the kitchen and the service area.
In Brazilian cinema, the maid’s room has made significant appearances in films such as “Que Horas Ela Volta?”, “Domestica, “Do Outro Lado da Cozinha”, “Recife Frio”, “Domingo” e “Casa Grande”. Never, however, has it gained as much prominence as in “Passion According to G.H.”, a transposition of the book of the same name by Clarice Lispector done for the cinema by Luiz Fernando Carvalho. Here the maid room becomes the scene of a lugubrious epiphany for the owner of the house, who had not entered in it for years.