The Diary of a Chambermaid (French: Le Journal d'une femme de chambre) is a 1900 decadent novel by Octave Mirbeau, published during the Dreyfus Affair.

First published in serialized form in L’Écho de Paris from 1891 to 1892, Mirbeau’s novel was reworked and polished before appearing in the Dreyfusard journal La Revue Blanche in 1900.

[1] Ending up in a Norman town at the home of the Lanlaires,[2] with their grotesque family name, who owe their unjustifiable wealth to their respective 'honourable' parents' swindlings, she evokes, as she recalls her memories, all the jobs that she has done for years in the swankiest households, and draws a conclusion that the reader is invited to make his own: «However vile the riff-raff may be, they are never as vile as decent people.» (« Si infâmes que soient les canailles, ils ne le sont jamais autant que les honnêtes gens.

However, he offers no sentimentalised image of the underclass, as servants exploited by their masters are ideologically alienated themselves: « D'être domestique, on a ça dans le sang... ».

[4] With its fractured exposition, its temporal dislocations, its clashing styles, and varying forms, Mirbeau's novel breaks with the conventions of the realistic novel and relinquishes all claims to documentary objectivity and narrative linearity.