"In one hotel, the maid who built the fire fainted in our room. Exhaustion was the cause. We talked with her later and learned that she worked 17 hours a day and makes 95 marks a month - about 50 cents"
About this Quote
The intent is pointedly anti-romantic. Hotels sell warmth and comfort as ambiance; Smedley shows the hidden labor that literally makes the room habitable. “Built the fire” carries an old-world quaintness, but the collapse shatters it. The voice stays controlled, almost reportorial, which is the subtextual weapon: outrage doesn’t need adjectives when the arithmetic is this obscene.
Context matters. Smedley wrote out of the early 20th century’s churn of labor movements, war economies, and sharpening class divides. Her journalism often aligned with radical critiques of capitalism and imperial power, and you can feel that infrastructure here. The maid is not individualized beyond her function because the point isn’t her personality; it’s her replaceability inside a machine that runs on fatigue.
Even the parenthetical “about 50 cents” is a small act of editorial aggression. It invites the reader to imagine paying pocket change for someone else’s near-collapse, then sleeping well beside the fire she didn’t live long enough to enjoy.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Smedley, Agnes. (n.d.). In one hotel, the maid who built the fire fainted in our room. Exhaustion was the cause. We talked with her later and learned that she worked 17 hours a day and makes 95 marks a month - about 50 cents. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/in-one-hotel-the-maid-who-built-the-fire-fainted-36846/
Chicago Style
Smedley, Agnes. "In one hotel, the maid who built the fire fainted in our room. Exhaustion was the cause. We talked with her later and learned that she worked 17 hours a day and makes 95 marks a month - about 50 cents." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/in-one-hotel-the-maid-who-built-the-fire-fainted-36846/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"In one hotel, the maid who built the fire fainted in our room. Exhaustion was the cause. We talked with her later and learned that she worked 17 hours a day and makes 95 marks a month - about 50 cents." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/in-one-hotel-the-maid-who-built-the-fire-fainted-36846/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
