From the Macrocosm to the Microcosm: From the Wider World to the Apartment in Paris, the Moral Life of the Nanny

As if on a political theater stage, a social and moral drama is being acted in Parisian homes. The theatrical situation involves three characters: the nanny, the employer, and the companion. Although they are interdependent, these characters are engaged in social domination relationships and as they attempt to justify their everyday action, they are engaged in a moral plot. The employer is confronted to the trial of moral division, torn between the ethics of justice and the ethics of care. Thus, the recognition of the other’s morality seems to be the basic stake of social recognition ? the lack of knowledge of the other’s morality then becoming the sign and the tool of social domination.