SOURCE: Gaines, James F. “Usurpation and Heroic Lies: A Baroque Dilemma in La Suivante.” Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature 15, no. 29 (1988): 451-62.

In the following essay, Gaines contends that the usurpation of social rank plays a prominent role in The Maidservant.

It is not astonishing that usurpation of social rank, the manipulation of appearances in order to lay claim to an unauthorized essential identity, should play a prominent role in the evolution of baroque social comedy, especially in France, where mobility was slower and more strictly regulated than in most other European lands. But one is perhaps surprised to find the topic making its debut in the early works of Pierre Corneille, who has been classified not infrequently as the ultimate vicarious spokesman for nobiliary gloire and qualitative heroism.¹ A deeper look, particularly at the dramatist's “middle period” dispels this impression. From La Mort de Pompée to...