The Housemaid

“If I leave this house, it will be in handcuffs. […] Now that the police officers are in the house and they’ve discovered what’s upstairs, there’s no turning back.”

The Prologue opens with an unnamed woman in a house that contains a body and is being searched by the police. In keeping with its genre, the book immediately presents the central conflict of the book: the events surrounding the body upstairs. The lack of detail about the woman’s identity or that of the body in question helps create the suspense that the book maintains throughout.

“I turn away from the window to look at Mrs. Winchester’s smiling face. I still can’t quite put my finger on what’s bothering me. There’s something about this room that’s making a little ball of dread form in the pit of my stomach.”

Millie is introduced to her new living quarters, the room in the attic, and immediately feels unsettled by them. She later attributes this to the fact that the door locks from the outside and requests a key. However, her instantaneous reaction to the room helps set the tone for this space—and foreshadows that something sinister has taken place or will take place here.

“As I shut the door, I notice marks in the wood. Long thin lines running down the length of the door at about the level of my shoulder. I run my fingers over the indentations. They almost seem like […] Scratches. Like somebody was scraping at the door. Trying to get out.”

Millie notices scratches in the door of her room and accurately determines that it looks like someone scratched at the door to be let out. The book later reveals that Nina did, in fact, scratch at the door when she was first locked in. Millie’s observation hints at this revelation, as well as a similar fate that Millie will experience in the room.