The Maid

“As I place a hand on the shining brass railing and walk up the scarlet steps that lead to the hotel’s majestic portico, I’m Dorothy entering Oz. I push through the gleaming revolving doors and I see my true self reflected in the glass—my dark hair and pale complexion are omnipresent, but a blush returns to my cheeks, my raison d’être restored once more.”

The hotel represents for Molly a magical place. The word majestic and the hotel’s name, the Regency Grand, suggest a palace, and when Molly enters, she is transformed into a princess. Her dark hair and pale complexion are reminiscent of Snow White in the fairytale.

“There’s nothing quite like a perfectly stocked maid’s trolley early in the morning. It is, in my humble opinion, a cornucopia of bounty and beauty. The crisp little packages of delicately wrapped soaps that smell of orange blossom, the tiny Crabtree & Evelyn shampoo bottles, the squat tissue boxes, the toilet-paper rolls wrapped in hygienic film, the bleached white towels in three sizes—bath, hand, and washcloth—and the stacks of doilies for the tea-and-coffee service tray.”

The cornucopia is a horn or horn-shaped basket from which pours a never-ending bounty. To Molly, every tiny, individually wrapped item is a small treasure. When she is promoted to head maid, she fills each of her maids’ trolleys with this magical bounty, including occasionally a small additional treasure just for the maids.

“When I don my maid uniform—not the frumpy Downton Abbey style or even the Playboy-bunny cliché, but the blinding-white starched dress shirt and the slim-fit black pencil skirt (made from stretchy fabric for easy bending)—I am whole. Once I’m dressed for my workday, I feel more confident, like I know just what to say and do—at least, most of the time. And once I take off my uniform at the end of the day, I feel naked, unprotected, undone.”

Molly feels safest in her black-and-white world where the rules are clear, and nothing is ambiguous. She is anonymous and invisible. When she takes off her uniform, she becomes Gray again in a world of moral ambiguities where she seems to be perpetually making mistakes.