The Housemaid

In keeping with the book’s genre, one of its central themes concerns the seen and the unseen—that is, things appearing one way while the truth remains hidden from sight. However, this context extends to characters and social backgrounds, which play into the narrative too. In the Prologue, an unnamed woman is present in a house with a dead body. The woman’s presence implicates one of the two central characters in the book—Nina or Millie—as having been involved with something heinous. This is further reinforced by how, from the very outset, both women appear to be hiding something.

For instance, while Nina initially appears warm and friendly, if slightly eccentric, she soon is depicted as erratic and “high strung,” and people gossip about her past. In addition, Nina’s history of apparent mental illness and resulting violence is revealed during Millie’s time with the Winchesters. Millie, too, is hiding her criminal past from her employers; however, the narrative brushes this away, painting Millie in a sympathetic light. The fact that she misled Nina about her glasses is a minor “white lie”; her sleeping with Andrew seems justified by how Nina mistreats Millie and how unhappy Andrew seems with Nina.