Member-only story
The 4 Areas Of Abuse Alex Suffers In Netflix’s MAID Series
Emotional abuse is still abuse, even if there aren’t any bruises left behind to see.
(Spoiler and trigger warning regarding MAID. Please read at your own risk.)
In a writing class that I took earlier this year, I was tasked with writing about fear. I wasn’t able to come up with an idea on the subject until now.
When watching MAID, the new series on Netflix based on Stephanie Land’s memoir of the same name, I was surprised to find that it not only filled me with terrible anxiety but also a deep sense of dread.
Helplessness; gaslighting; hunger; betrayal; assault; loneliness.
These are only a few of the fears that scraped through me as I watched MAID with my family on a two-week vacation earlier this year. Doubly so because my personal perspective is that of a woman — one of the genders that have been, for centuries, forced downward by a boot heel. I didn’t even realize I was afraid of these things, that those emotions lay dormant within me, until I was faced with the struggles of this character in who I saw so much of myself (and all women).
Alex, the protagonist of MAID, struggles to leave her abusive boyfriend and keep custody of her daughter with little to no…