Discussion Questions-Maid to Order (Tess Gannaway)

Discussion Questions

1. How does the franchised maid service differ from the traditional practice run out of an employer’s home? What are the pros and cons of each?

2. What does the process of cleaning another person’s filth symbolize? How can it be used to subjugate a group of people and who has is subjugated in the past? Who is it marginalizing now?

3. Are the franchised systems “cleaner”? If not then how is this representative of the theme of American superficiality.

“But the point at The Maid’s, apparently, is not to clean so much as it is to create the appearance of having been cleaned, not to sanitize but to create a kind of stage setting for family life. And the stage setting Americans seem to prefer is sterile only in the metaphorical sense, like a motel room or the fake interiors in which soap operas and sitcoms take place” (67).