Ideological or Psychological Subjugation? - Inescapable Servitude in The Remains of the Day (1993)

This research paper explores Stevens - the protagonist of the cinematic text The Remains of the Day (1993) which is directed by James Ivory, whilst aiming to delineate his absolute servitude to the British aristocracy and its socio-psychological impact on his personal alienation. The study further attempts to posit Stevens’s predicament and reification within the wider socio-political context of 1930s Britain. The seemingly innocuous employer-patron relationship is analysed through the convergent theoretical frameworks of Louis Althusser's Ideological State Apparatuses, Karl Marx's false consciousness and Freudian psychoanalysis. As revealed in the discussion, it is evident that Stevens has internalised British aristocratic values to the extent of complete subjectivity, reflecting the concepts of subject and agent under hegemonic reproduction and emotional repression. This interdisciplinary research thus postulates the ways that servile subjectivity is produced and maintained drawing on contemporary research and ituating Stevens’s narration within a conceptualisation of broader forms of social and psychological domination within a postcolonial British social system.