SOURCE: Plunka, Gene A. “A Source for Jean Genet's Les Bonnes: Jean Cocteau's ‘Anna la bonne.’” Notes on Contemporary Literature 21, no. 4 (September 1991): 2-3.

In the following essay Plunka suggests an alternative source of inspiration for The Maids.

For years, critics have cited the 1933 murders committed by Christine and Léa Papin of their mistress and her daughter in Le Mans, France, as the source of Jean Genet's Les Bonnes (Décines: Marc Barbezat, 1947). Genet, an avid reader of Détective, would have acquired his information on the Papin sisters as a result of their appearance on the cover of that magazine (9 February 1933) during their notorious trial, which was widely publicized in France. Genet, however, in a 10 March 1949 interview with Hélène Tournaire in La Bataille, stated that he was not inspired by the trial of the Papin sisters (“Jean Genet, évadé de l'enfer cherche la clé d'un...