Ideological and diegetic function of maids in novels by Júlio Dinis and Eça de Queirós: the cases of Antónia (Una familia inglesa) and Juliana (O primo Basílio)

Abstract

Servants, and especially maids, were very common social types in nineteenth-century cities. In realist novels these were important characters, despite their social irrelevance, to create the illusion that literary fiction of the time accurately portrayed external reality. A comparison between the maids Antónia, from Uma família inglesa, and Juliana, from O primo Basílio, also allows us to look at different ways of representing fictional characters in liberal and bourgeois realism (Júlio Dinis) and in naturalistic realism (Eça de Queirós).