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-century maids' testimonies. It explores demeaning images of servants to examine the ways intellectuals reconciled the colonial legacy of servitude with Brazil's modernization. While the first chapters examine the discourse of 'the servant problem, ' revealing the elite's power anxieties vis-a-vis post-abolition transformations of domestic social contracts, later chapters explore new nuances of cross-racial conflicts facing contemporary servants' grassroots movements and the increase in female white-collar employment.

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.