The Housemaid

“I turn away from the window to look at Mrs. Winchester’s smiling face. I still can’t quite put my finger on what’s bothering me. There’s something about this room that’s making a little ball of dread form in the pit of my stomach.”

Millie is introduced to her new living quarters, the room in the attic, and immediately feels unsettled by them. She later attributes this to the fact that the door locks from the outside and requests a key. However, her instantaneous reaction to the room helps set the tone for this space—and foreshadows that something sinister has taken place or will take place here.

“As I shut the door, I notice marks in the wood. Long thin lines running down the length of the door at about the level of my shoulder. I run my fingers over the indentations. They almost seem like […] Scratches. Like somebody was scraping at the door. Trying to get out.”

Millie notices scratches in the door of her room and accurately determines that it looks like someone scratched at the door to be let out. The book later reveals that Nina did, in fact, scratch at the door when she was first locked in. Millie’s observation hints at this revelation, as well as a similar fate that Millie will experience in the room.

“Despite the disarray of her house, she looks flawless right now in another one of her gleaming white skirt-and-blouse combinations. White is her color. Cecelia’s too, apparently. They match the house.”

Millie notices how Nina and Cecelia are both always dressed in flawless white. White clothes are an important symbol within the book, representing Andrew’s tyrannical need for perfection and the way he imposes it on his victims. Millie misreads Nina and Cecelia’s wardrobe choices as their own, unaware of Andrew’s demands; this further points to The Seen and the Unseen theme.

“I can’t help but think back to what that nosy redhead said to me. What did she mean by that? Is Nina more than just an eccentric and demanding boss? Is there something else going on with her? Maybe it’s better if I don’t know.”

Millie wonders about a remark that one of the other mothers made regarding Nina’s mental health. She worries that there may be more to Nina’s eccentric behavior than meets the eye. Although Millie is right about this, ironically it’s not because of what Millie or the other mothers assume. This too points to The Seen and the Unseen theme.

“‘Would it be really bad manners if I eat some peanut butter right out of the jar?’ […]

‘As long as you’re not eating in front of Cecelia. […] You know. Because she’s allergic.’

‘No, she’s not. […] I think I would know if my daughter were allergic to peanuts. […] Anyway, do you think we would keep a big jar of it in the pantry if she were allergic?’”

Andrew denies that Cecelia is allergic to peanuts, despite Nina and Cecelia having told Millie this. The story later reveals that Cecelia is indeed allergic; the jar of peanut butter is kept in the pantry as a threat of punishment, in case she misbehaves. The ease with which Andrew dismisses this reality and Millie believes him points to how effectively he’s able to keep up appearances of being the reasonable one to everyone around Nina and him. Early on, he even gaslights Nina into believing that she had a psychotic crisis.

“On the very first day I met her, she instructed me to call her Nina. I’ve been calling her that the entire time I’ve been working here, and she’s never said a word about it. Now she’s acting like I’m taking liberties. The worst part is the other women are acting like Nina is a hero for telling me off.”

Nina tells Millie off for calling her “Nina” instead of “Mrs. Winchester,” although this Nina herself insisted that Millie do so. Nina’s reprimand and the other mothers’ reaction highlights the power dynamic between Nina and Millie. In relation to Andrew, Nina holds far less social power. To find someone she could victimize in his eyes, Nina needed to look for someone with even less social power than her. Thus, she turns to Millie, who occupies a different social strata, and asserts power in cruel ways to subjugate Millie. This points to The Interrelationships Among Discipline, Power, and Perfection as well as Notions Surrounding Victimhood and Abuse.

“I close my eyes for a moment and think about what it would be like to live in Nina’s shoes. To be the woman in charge of this household. To have the expensive clothing and the shoes and the fancy car. To have a maid I could boss around […] And most of all, to have a husband like Andrew.”

Millie envies Nina’s life, imagining what it would be like. Eventually, she does get to walk in Nina’s shoes for a few days, and it’s nothing like she originally imagined—she realizes that Nina was never in charge of anything at all, and all the expensive clothes and loving gestures from Andrew couldn’t make up for the torture he carries out. The irony in this passage points to The Seen and the Unseen theme.

“The box is filled with baby stuff. Little white baby blankets, rattles, dolls. There’s a little pile of tiny white onesies.” 

Evelyn sends a box of Andrew’s baby things when she hears that he and Nina are trying for a child. All the clothes and toys are white, which is also the only color that Evelyn, Nina, and Cecelia seem to wear. White clothes symbolize the excessive need for perfection in the book; retrospectively, Andrew’s white baby things are a clue that Evelyn treated him the same way he eventually treated Nina.

“‘As I climb the stairs to the attic, I get a dark, heavy sensation in the pit of my stomach. As much as I’m looking forward to tonight, I have a bad feeling about it. I have a feeling that if I go to the show tonight, something terrible will happen.”

Millie’s excited about going to the show with Andrew but equally feels a sense of foreboding. Although Millie’s apprehensions are eventually proven right, they exist for a different reason at this point: Millie still believes that Nina is the danger. However, she eventually realizes that when entering into a relationship with Andrew, the only person to fear is Andrew himself.

“‘You’re such a gentleman,’ I remark.

He chuckles. ‘Thank my mother. That’s the way I was raised.’

‘Well, she raised you right.’

He beams at me. ‘She’d be very glad to hear that.’”

Millie comments on Andrew’s good manners, and he delightedly credits his mother for them. An innocuous interaction by itself, in the context of Evelyn’s treatment of Andrew as a child, the white baby clothes, her overly critical comments about Nina’s parenting, and Andrew’s eagerness to please his mother even as an adult, Andrew’s response becomes one more clue to Evelyn’s dark and cruel behavior toward her son in the name of discipline. Eventually, it becomes clear that all who Andrew’s identity, the good and the bad, is indeed because of Evelyn.

“I don’t like that guy […] He works on all the houses in the neighborhood, but he spends a third of his time in our yard. He’s always out there. I don’t even know what the hell he’s doing half the time. […] I told Nina to get rid of him and hire somebody else, but she says everybody uses him and he’s apparently the best.”

Andrew expresses his discomfort around Enzo, describing how Enzo spends far more time at the Winchesters’ house than anywhere else. Eventually, the story reveals that Enzo spends more time there to help ensure Nina’s safety—the same reason she refuses to fire him. In some sense, Andrew’s discomfort is justified: Although he doesn’t realize it, Enzo is the only person who sees through the elaborate ruse Andrew has concocted around Nina and their marriage.

“‘So what were you in prison for?’ I really, really wish I had a beer. I open my mouth, but before I can figure out what to tell him, he says, ‘Forget it. I don’t want to know. It’s none of my business.’”

Andrew asks Millie about her past but then dismisses it before she can answer. His dismissal reveals how he underestimates her. Millie’s youthful and pleasing appearance misleads Andrew to believe that she couldn’t possibly be dangerous; thus, he doesn’t even bother to learn the details of her criminal past. This mistake leads to his downfall.

“Millie didn’t steal this clothing. I remember you emptying your closet. You put it all in trash bags and said you were donating it. […] no way she stole this from you. Why are you doing this to her?”

When Nina accuses Millie of stealing her clothing, Andrew finally comes to her defense. Months of Nina’s mistreatment of Millie, followed by Andrew and Millie’s electric sexual encounter in the city, have finally driven him to the breaking point. Significantly, the fallout happens over the white dresses that Nina gave Millie which, among other things, functions as a kind of uniform for Andrew’s victims. The white dresses are no longer Nina’s; they’re Millie’s, even in Andrew’s eyes.

“Of course, I’ll have to ask Andrew’s permission before I clean out a drawer downstairs. But he can’t expect me to live up here anymore. It’s inhuman. This room is like some sort of torture chamber.”

Millie decides to move into the main house once Nina moves out. Although this is just a passing thought, Millie realizes how big a factor in their relationship Andrew’s “permission” will come to be. Furthermore, the room is intentionally set up like a torture chamber, and Andrew fully expects the women he abuses to stay up there for the full duration of their punishments.

“From the night of our magical first date, he made his intentions clear to me. He was looking for a serious relationship. He had been engaged before, a year earlier, to a woman named Kathleen, but it hadn’t worked out. He was ready to get married. He was willing to take on both me and Cecelia.”

Nina and Andrew have a short, whirlwind courtship before marrying, and Andrew’s desire to get married quickly expedites the marriage. The quick courtship prevents Nina from peeking underneath the appearance of perfection or even asking any other questions about why things didn’t work out between him and his ex, Kathleen. While this should have been a red flag for her, she’s blown away by his willingness to welcome her and Cecelia into his life. This points to Nina’s initial naivete and also to her priorities as a mother: Having a man willing to care for her daughter is enough to overlook almost anything else.

“The only thing about Andy that isn’t ideal is […] his mother. Evelyn Winchester is around a little bit more than I would like. And I wouldn’t call her the warmest person in the world. Despite Andy’s assurance that she “loves babies” and is “thrilled” to watch Cece, she always seems a bit put out when we ask her to babysit. And the evening invariably concludes with a set of criticisms of my parenting, thinly veiled as ‘suggestions.’”

Nina’s gut feeling about Evelyn is spot-on. Her observations about Evelyn’s less than warm nature are put in context by the climactic revelation about her relationship with Andrew. Equally contextualized are her constant criticisms of Nina’s parenting: Evelyn’s standard for “discipline”—and how it ought to be ensured—differ vastly from Nina’s.

“You have to learn your lesson before you can be let out. […] The only way to learn is to see the consequences of your actions.”

The first time Nina is locked in, Andrew tells her that she can only be let out after she learns her lesson. Andrew sees the torture he carries out as a method of discipline, his way of helping his lovers become better people. This conflated sense of morality results from Evelyn’s having disciplined him in a similar manner as a child and points to the book’s theme of The Interrelationships Among Discipline, Power, and Perfection.

“His voice is so kind and gentle, I start to wonder if maybe I imagined the whole thing. After all, he’s been such a good husband. Would he really lock me up in a room and make me pull out my hair? That doesn’t sound like something he would do. Maybe I just have a fever and this is all a horrible hallucination?”

Immediately after her first experience in the attic room, Nina wants to believe it was a hallucination with no other coaxing except Andrew’s seemingly caring behavior. This reveals the power of persuasion that Andrew is able to exhibit over the people around him and how he can effectively gaslight and control Nina for so long.

“I never noticed before how frequently Evelyn dresses in white, which has always been Andy’s favorite color on me. It suits her though. Her hair looks like it might have once been blond, but now she’s just at that precipice between blond and white […]. Evelyn is, in general, incredibly well preserved and flawless.”

Nina notes how Evelyn is usually dressed in white and sports once-blonde hair; her appearance is “flawless.” This hints at the high standard of perfection, particularly with respect to appearance, that Evelyn demands from everyone around her, including herself. Thus, Andrew wants Nina to dress in white and lighten her hair. He transfers his unresolved trauma and need to exert power over Evelyn onto his lovers, molding them in his mother’s image and carrying out on them the same torturous methods she taught him.

“She gives him a disapproving look and Andy’s entire face turns bright red. I’ve noticed how desperate he is for her approval.”

Nina notices that Andrew is consistently desperate for Evelyn’s approval. For a man otherwise confident and self-assured, this is a significant tell. The final revelation explains Andrew’s desire to please as stemming from the cruel and torturous disciplinary methods he was subjected to as a child, in pursuance of an impossible ideal of perfection.

“First of all, she has to be beautiful. More beautiful than I am, which shouldn’t be hard since I’ve deliberately let myself go the last few years. She has to be younger than me—young enough to give Andy the children he so badly wants. She has to look good in white. He loves that color. And most of all, she has to be desperate.”

As Nina plans her replacement, she reflects on all the things in a woman that will attract Andrew: Physical appearance undoubtedly tops the list; looking good in white is another criterion, once again pointing to the symbolism of the white dresses. In addition, Nina needs someone desperate enough not to leave the situation. In retrospect, Nina, too, was desperate to some degree when she got together with Andrew: As a single mother who gave up her job after marrying Andrew, even without his extreme machinations, she would’ve had no other place to go.

“He watched me suffer in here for the entire day. And he has every intention of doing this to me again. […] I’ve already been a prisoner once—I won’t let it happen again. […] So I reach into the pocket of my jeans. And I pull out the bottle of pepper spray I found in the bucket.”

When Andrew comes in to let Millie out after she completes her punishment, she executes her plan of escape. Andrew is defeated by one of his own instruments of torture: the pepper spray he once forced Nina to spray herself with. Furthermore, Andrew’s resulting temporary blindness after Millie pepper-sprays him mirrors the obliviousness he displays toward Millie’s past and strength of character. His lack of concern about the former keeps him in the dark about the latter; this allows Millie to effectively trap him.

“I wonder what Andrew’s mother had in mind for ‘discipline.’ If it’s anything like Andy’s idea of punishment, I’m glad Nina never went through with it.”

Upon seeing Evelyn’s text message stating that Nina was lax about discipline with Cecelia, Millie feels a stab of sympathy for Nina and Cecelia. This passage foreshadows the final reveal: Evelyn’s disciplinary methods aren’t only exactly like Andrew’s, she’s responsible for Andrew’s twisted tendencies.