Franz Kafka was an Austrian-Czech novelist and writer from Prague. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature; he wrote in German. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the novella The Metamorphosis and the novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe absurd situations like those depicted in his writing.
The Metamorphosis, also translated as The Transformation, is a novella by Franz Kafka published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, The Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and struggles to adjust to this condition. The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, who have offered varied interpretations. In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach.
Absurdist fiction is a genre of novels, plays, poems, films, or other media that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. In some cases, it may overlap with literary nonsense.
Dandy Nichols was an English actress best known for her role as Else Garnett, the long-suffering wife of the character Alf Garnett, in the BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part.
A maid, housemaid, or maidservant is a female domestic worker. In the Victorian era, domestic service was the second-largest category of employment in England and Wales, after agricultural work. In developed Western nations, full-time maids are now typically only found in the wealthiest households. In other parts of the world, maids remain common in urban middle-class households.
Ella Enchanted is a fantasy novel written by Gail Carson Levine and published in 1997. The story is a retelling of Cinderella featuring various mythical creatures including fairies, elves, ogres, gnomes, and giants.
Kathleen Harrison was a prolific English character actress best remembered for her role as Mrs. Huggett in a trio of British post-war comedies about a working-class family's misadventures, The Huggetts. She later played the charwoman Mrs. Dilber opposite Alastair Sim in the 1951 film Scrooge and a Cockney charwoman who inherits a fortune in the television series Mrs Thursday (1966–67).
A housekeeper is an individual responsible for the supervision of a house's cleaning staff. The housekeeper may also perform the cleaning duties themself.
Mrs McGinty's Dead is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1952 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 3 March the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition at nine shillings and sixpence (9/6). The Detective Book Club issued an edition, also in 1952, as Blood Will Tell.
Mammy Two Shoes is a fictional character in MGM's Tom and Jerry cartoons. She is a middle-aged African American woman based on the mammy stereotype.
Maid service, cleaning service, apartment cleaning and janitorial service are terms more modernly describing a specialized outside service, providing a specific service to individuals, businesses, fraternal clubs and associations as well residential premises.
Minerva Urecal was an American stage and radio performer as well as a character actress in Hollywood films and on various television series from the early 1950s to 1965.
Olive Rita Webb, later known as Olive Rita Thompson, was an English character actress, mainly in comedy roles. She was the eldest child of Henry Augustus Webb (1880–1926) and Rose Jeannette Keysor. She had a younger brother, Henry Richard Webb, also an actor, and two elder identical twin half-brothers, Leslie and Gordon Durlacher, from her mother's first marriage to Samuel Durlacher. A half-brother was the actor George Webb.
Mary Gordon was a Scottish actress who mainly played housekeepers and mothers, most notably the landlady Mrs. Hudson in the Sherlock Holmes series of movies of the 1940s starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Her body of work included nearly 300 films between 1925 and 1950.
Dorothea Wolbert was an American film actress. She appeared in more than 140 films between 1916 and 1957. She appeared on the television series I Love Lucy in episode #137, "Ricky's European Booking" (1956).
Mrs. Hudson is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. She is the landlady of 221B Baker Street, the London residence in which Sherlock Holmes lives.
Musuri is a Korean term referring to female slaves in charge of odd chores in the court during the Goryeo and Joseon Dynasty of Korea. Their main tasks were miscellaneous works such as drawing water from a well, making a fire in the fireplace or cleaning.
The Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, The Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and struggles to adjust to his new condition. The novella has been recreated, referenced, or parodied in various popular culture media.
American Gothic is a photograph of Ella Watson, an American charwoman, taken by the photographer Gordon Parks in 1942. It is a reimagining of the 1930 painting American Gothic by Grant Wood.
Ella Watson was an American janitor and charwoman who was famously the subject of Gordon Parks' photographic series including American Gothic in 1942, among at least 90 other photographs. According to the Gordon Parks Foundation, "Parks asked if he could take Watson’s picture. She agreed, and for four months gave him access to her home and her community. The resulting photographs were a breakthrough in Parks’ career." In 2024, the Minneapolis Institute of Art exhibited 60 of the photographs.
