Edward Ngene closely looks at the effects of domestic abuse victims even after they escape from the violence and pushes for more awareness on this topic.
Maid starts with Alex, a single mother getting up in the middle of the night trying to escape her abusive boyfriend, Sean. Too afraid and intimidated to wake up Sean and confront him, Alex quietly grabs her daughter and sneaks off into the car with barely anything; Alex mindlessly drives away, just trying to get as much distance from Sean as possible. In this scene, the audience is on the edge of their seats, terrified, hoping Alex does not get caught, yet she has not even been touched. This is how Maid is teaching people what emotional abuse is all about.
Maid is a ten-episode Netflix series that displays a single mother named Alex and her roller coaster ride journey after taking her kid and escaping from an abusive relationship. After escaping, she is faced with poverty, the responsibility of taking care of a kid, and the mental trauma she has suffered. The series shows Alex dealing with the mental scars as she does everything she can to put a roof over there head and a meal on her daughter's plate. With Alex moving from shelter to shelter, working many hours to barely hold up, going through piles of paperwork to try and receive as much aid as possible. Maid is not just a realistic portrayal of domestic abuse but also a lesson for the public about why emotional abuse is a form of domestic violence. The realism of Maid is teaching the audience how crucial emotional abuse is and why it should not be overlooked.
One of the ways Maid portrays a realistic display of domestic abuse on Netflix is shown through the many obstacles Alex and her daughter have to face after escaping her abusive partner. One of the first issues after escaping is a lack of money. This is a common trend throughout the show. Jen Chaney of Vulture discusses his ideas about the poverty shown in Maid. Immediately after escaping, Alex and her Daughter have nowhere to go with only $18 to their name half of it is used to pay for gas, and they are forced to sleep in the car for the night. Alex's only choice is to find housing for herself and her child, with nowhere to go. Alex heads to social services with hopes of finding housing. However, she must prove she has a job to get subsidized housing and daycare for a child. This leaves Alex in a challenging situation because to even obtain a job, Alex would still need someone to take care of her daughter, and daycare is entirely out of the option because she does not have any money. This leaves Alex with only one choice: to become a maid as a quick way of getting an income without waiting for a job interview and then waiting to be hired. Mindy Isser of Jacobin speaks about the many downsides to domestic work and the adverse effects in the long run. Emily Tannenbaum of MSN expresses just how damaging emotional abuse can be and how many people fail to realize that.
In addition to Alex's newly found poverty, Maid also displays the lasting mental trauma after leaving an abusive relationship. This is laid out throughout the entire series, with Alex constantly having flashbacks of the numerous things she has witnessed and been through. In one scene, Alex relays when she found out she was pregnant; she instantly has a flashback of Sean aggressively yelling in her face calling her many different types of names and slurs. Because Alex did not want an abortion, this instantly enraged Sean because he did not want a kid and wanted her to get an abortion. Alex's childhood trauma is also displayed when she crawls in a tight space during her job. This scene shows Alex's old memories of her mom being abused by her father that even she forgot about. The memory was awoken because she was in a tight space, almost like a cupboard, that instantly sparked the memories of her lasting mental trauma. Donna Sabella researched the issue of mental illness in 2014; throughout this research, she studied the many causes of mental illness. One of these factors where the person's upbringing, many people with mental illness experienced many awful things throughout their youth which caused them to develop mental illness slowly. Moreover, she started having flashbacks of being in a cupboard and hearing yelling, and then her mother grabbed her out of the cupboard with a bloody nose telling her we were getting out of her.
Furthermore, on lasting mental trauma, Maid realistically shows how even after domestic abuse victims leave their partner, they sometimes go back to their abuser; there can be many different reasons why this happens. Wendy Patrick of Psychology Today discusses the multitude of reasons why a former victim of domestic abuse would return to their abuser. This is shown in Maid a couple of times in the series throughout the show. This is displayed through Alex's friend Danielle whom she meets at the domestic violence shelter. Danielle showed Alex her visible scar on her neck, caused by her ex-boyfriend, who tried to strangle her; she even told Alex how much anger she had towards him. Then the next day, Alex checks up on her, and she is gone, later finding out that she left with her ex-boyfriend, who abused her. Alex also shows this when she decides to allow Sean back in her and Maddy's life; she even moves back in with him. Even after everything Sean put her through, she still decided to go back around him, even with her fear of him.
Contrarily, many argue that Alex is an unrealistically perfect person and mother. She never loses her temper, acts out of frustration, or does anything uncharacter-like, which many find hard to believe for someone who has been emotionally abused. Elizabeth Skoski of SlATE explains why she feels Alex is unrealistically perfect throughout the entire series of Maid. This evidence is supported by Alex allowing her daughter to throw a temper tantrum to get her to stop the car and get her toy after she dropped it; Alex constantly allows her co-worker to give her the most challenging part of the job, Alex doing nothing when Sean bring her dad around her and Maddy, even after she told him not to, and many more. Throughout the series, it is shown how both Sean and Alex's mother and father would constantly act out of their frustration and anger. They acted out of the moment and did not stop to think of the repercussions later on. As shown in the series, Alex's PEP teacher states, "Your children see how you handle stress and treat other people. They soak all that info in like little sponges. Children follow our example. Kids dont\’t come out of the womb knowing how to be violent and rude. They learn it from you. This is something Alex paid attention to and learned from. She wants the best life for her daughter Maddy, and she knows that to raise her correctly, she must be an example; she cannot act out of frustration. She must keep her composure. She is being the change she wants for her daughter's life. Dorothy Rabinowitz of WSJ expresses how Alex, throughout the entire show, has made many changes and even put herself last to secure a cleaner life for her daughter Maddy.
In conclusion, The Netflix series Maid gives the audience an accurate, realistic display of emotional abuse; it shows how meaningful and unique emotional abuse is because it goes far deeper than just a bruise or a hit mark. It cannot be spotted with just the glance of an eye, and it also cannot just be fixed with a band-aid and time. Many people do not understand that domestic abuse is not only physical damage. This is far from true just because a victim has not been physically hit does not mean they have not been abused. This is shown multiple times throughout the show as well. With Alex constantly downplaying her abuse at the beginning and even her mother not believing in such a thing as emotional abuse. Sometimes emotional abuse can be worse than physical abuse. This is where Maid does an excellent job of realistically showing the audience that there are many different components to domestic abuse and the multitude of effects that can be caused by each one.
Edward Ngene currently lives in South Jersey and is a first-year studying business at Bloomfield College.
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