I have been watching a series on Netflix called “Maid.” Am sure some of you have heard of it. It’s rather new but has been among the top ten trending shows in Kenya for a while now. I have been trying to diversify my stories by focusing on other women’s issues. I believe that for my blog to be authentic and realistic in representing the life of “the contemporary woman,” then it needs to have wider perspective. So, I came up with this idea of writing a story about women I watch on films, or entire films, if they feature ideologies, events, or situations of interest in relation to my blog. These are stories I believe will inspire many of you as much as they inspired me; of course, written from my point of view. Before I got this website, I wrote about, “The Bold Type” on my Facebook page. This time, “Maid” is going to debut, “the Film Series,” on the website. Here’s the drill. I will be writing like one story a week highlighting a story about the contemporary woman drawn from TV and film. Nod if you agree 😄😄
In high school our Kiswahili teacher, bless her, always told us that, “Isimu ni kioo cha jamii.” If I could vaguely translate that to English, I would say that all types of art such as film produced are an illustration of our society. It explains why different films, songs, comedies, and other forms of art differ in their production, styles, and content; because they represent different cultures, and societies. In this segment of my blog (“the Film Series”), I will write interesting stories and analyses of different women I watch in films. This way, you can learn, and get to discover new films you can also look out for. I mean, I will also get a reasonable excuse to watch at least one film per week.
While watching “Maid,” I was first intrigued by the main character, Alex, and her rather complicated life (to say the least). But what made me really got me hooked was the realization that all the different women characters in the story had story lines featuring issues that affect different women in the society. From then on, I took the series very seriously and also very personally. It was like I was reading a set book in high school all over again.
Let’s start with Alex, the main character. Alex is a 25-year-old mother of one who is an abusive relationship. Sounds familiar? That’s because it is! In fact, we’ve talked about it in the past. Alex’s situation is quite sad, mostly because she did not know she was in an abusive relationship since she was not being physically abused. However, that did not change the fact that she was in constant emotional abuse, and lived in constant fear and anxiety that maybe the next time he would snap and physically abuse her.
The story gets even sadder because she was ashamed of admitting that she was a victim of domestic violence. What would people say? And who would even believe her when she did not have any physical bruises or injuries to back her claims? I know the answer to that should be no one would believe her, and indeed, in the real world virtually no one would believe her, but someone did believe her. Alex found herself in a domestic violence (D.V.) shelter led by a former victim of domestic violence, Denise. Being an old lady, Denise has seen all types of D.V. cases, and she knew that is exactly what Alex was going through.
While in the shelter, Alex made a friend, Danielle, who helped her face her anxiety and other fears to focus on building her life back. There’s something that Danielle told her that stuck in my head – “before they bite, they bark.” To me, this was the perfect advice for any contemporary woman in an abusive marriage. Don’t wait till it gets worse; because it will. At the slightest “bark”, leave. Unfortunately, Danielle leaves the shelter to go back to her husband which according to Denise happened more than you think. Apparently, the typical woman leaves their abusive husbands for a maximum of seven times before they fully make up their minds to never go back.
The interesting thing is that Alex, though not intentionally, also found herself back to living with Sean, her daughter Maddy’s father. I mean, he seemed to have changed, even stopped drinking. At some point, even I thought he was a nice guy, a good father. But you see, that’s exactly the point, he was a good father but a terrible husband. Eventually, he slipped right back to his old habits and Alex remembered exactly why he has left. But she felt trapped, she had no source of income especially since Sean had acted irrationally and as controlling as usual and essentially took away the car Alex used to commute to work. So, Alex remained trapped, and became withdrawn and helpless until she was totally fed up.
This time, when she was leaving, she left with absolutely nothing. Her mind was made up, she wanted peace and a safe home for her daughter, and she knew that she could not find that living with her abusive boyfriend. She got her friend Regina to come pick her up and she went back to the D.V. shelter to rethink her life. She never looked back.
The story had quite a happy ending. Alex got more jobs as a maid and saved enough to buy a car, she got accepted to a college to study writing, a successful student loan, and full custody of Maddy. Her happiest day finally came and she drove to Missoula, Montana, to study. Her life had begun afresh. If you are a woman in Alex’s shoes, you certainly deserve that!
Anyways, remember when I said that there were many women in the show whose lives and experiences resonated to various contemporary women?
Regina was a beautiful, filthy rich lawyer, but she was struggling with fertility, which finally led to her divorce. Alex was a poor, uneducated young mother who needed the strength to leave her abusive marriage and build herself and her career. Alex’s mother Paula was an old victim of domestic violence who turned to skimpy relationships and drugs to conceal her grief and past trauma. Denise who an elderly ex-domestic violence victim who dedicated her life to helping other women who were victims of the same. Danielle was a victim of Domestic Violence who still believed her husband would change despite his constant behavior, and finally Maddy, a young girl who didn’t deserve to grow up in an abusive and violent home.
All these women represent “the contemporary woman,” working through different life situation sand trying to figure it all out.
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Nyambura Macharia