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PARTISAN REVIEW
Desdemona Palombi has no point of contact whatsoever with Bru–
sadelli, except that it might have been better for her to have been the
maid of the Milanese nabob than of a middleclass lady.
It is hard for people who haven't lived in Italy to understand the
social situation and role of the vast number of peasant girls who come
to town to serve as maids. Italy boasts of being the only country in
Europe where serfdom was abolished by the twelfth century. This fact
was at the origin of that wonderful Italian achievement, the city state.
However, the absence of serfdom has never prevented Italian society
from being divided, with the encouragement of the Church, into two
vast classes: the "superior" and the "inferior." The distinction consists
mainly in this, that the first have rights that the second don't have.
The nature of these rights is not a matter of law but rather of adjust–
ment to varying historical conditions. The question is not so much for
the "superiors" to maintain at all costs certain specific privileges, but
rather that the distinction itself be maintained, in other words that there
will always be "inferiors." Otherwise there would be "anarchy." Eventu–
ally, the distinction boils down to that between the "rich" and the
"poor," the "cultivated" and the "ignorant," and it is maintained,
thanks to the habit of taking for granted the principle that there should
always be people who are poor and ignorant. The idea that "superior"
people have a right to an education and "inferior" people don't is the
one most consistently maintained by Italian society to this date.
There has been progress, in Italy, and the mass of people who can
actually be treated as inferiors has dwindled considerably. Industrial
workers, for example, have gained a special status, and the number of
peasants who own their land has increased. This has caused considerable
distress among the "superiors," especially among the middleclass, who
no longer know where they stand in the matter of superiority. There is
little that can be done about it, however, since even fascism ended in
"socialism." The only mass of "inferiors" that's left to prevent social
order from sinking into sheer chaos are the poor peasants and their
daughters, the maids.
Let's not dramatize. The maids' serfdom is not economic so much
as moral. They get room and board, a small salary (the equivalent of
ten to fifteen dollars a month), and days off to go out with their fiances.
Being, as they generally are, simpleminded romantic girls who do not
expect from life more than a few daydreams, the maids could
be
moderately happy. What makes the existence of most of them a torture is
the galling ambiguity of their position. They are supposed to be at the
same time blind instruments and members of the family they serve. Their
