"Gardner Dozois - Fairy Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

of courseтАФthis was a hard society, and everyone had to work, including the
step-mother and the two step-sisters. Much of the cost of maintaining the house
(which was not a working farm, regardless of what the stories tell you, too close to
the center of town, although they may have kept a few chickens) was defrayed by
revenues from land that EleanorтАЩs father had owned elsewhere, but those revenues
had slowly declined since the fatherтАЩs death, and in order to keep a tenuous
foot-hold on the middle-class, they had been forced to take in seamstress work,
which occupied all of them for several hours a day.
ItтАЩs true, though, that since her father died, two years before, and since
revenues had declined enough to preclude keeping servants, that much of the rest of
the work of maintaining the household had fallen on EleanorтАЩs shoulders, in addition
to her seamstress chores.
 She found it bitterly hard, as would you; in fact, spoiled by modernity, weтАЩd
find it even more onerous than she did, and suffer even more keenly. Housework
was hard physical labor in those days, especially in the backward hinterlands of
Central Europe, where even the (from our perspective) minimal household
conveniences that might be available to a rich family in London would not arrive for
a long lifetime, or maybe two. Housework was brutal and unrelenting labor,
stretching from dawn until well after dusk, the equivalent in its demands on
someoneтАЩs reserves of strength and endurance of working on a road-gang or in a
coal mine; it was the main reason, along with the rigors and hazards of childbirth,
why women wore out so fast and died so young. Not for nothing did the phrase
тАЬSlaving over a hot stoveтАЭ come into existence; doing laundry was even worse, a
task so gruelingтАФpounding the clothes, twisting them dry, starting over againтАФthat
it was rarely tackled more than once a week even in households where there were
several women to divide the work up amongst them; and scrubbing, inside or out,
was done on your knees in any and all weathers, with a stiff-bristled brush and raw
potash soap that stung your nostrils and blistered your hands.
Of course, every other woman in this society, except for the very richest, had
to deal with these kind of labors as well, so there was nothing unique about
EleanorтАЩs lot, or any reason to feel sorry for her in particular, as the stories
sometimes seem to invite us to doтАжthe subtext pretty obviously being that she is an
aristocrat-in-hiding, or at least a member of the prosperous upper class, being forced
to do the work of a peasant. Think of that! Being made to work just like a common,
ordinary girl! As if she wasnтАЩt any better than anyone else! (Oddly enough, this
reaction of indignation usually comes from people who have to work for a living
every day themselves, not from whatever millionaires or members of the peerage
might be lurking in the audience.)
In fact, though, Eleanor had also been spoiled, not by modernity but by her
father, sheltered by his money from most of the chores even a child of the merchant
class would usually have had to become inured toтАжso perhaps she did feel it more
keenly than most women of her day would have. Her father had also spoiled her in
other, more significant ways, teaching her to read (something still frowned upon, if
no longer actively forbidden by law), teaching her to love books and learning,
teaching her to dream. Teaching her to be ambitiousтАФbut ambitious for what
purpose? She had a good mind, and her father had given her the beginnings of a
decent education, but what was she supposed to do with it? Further formal
schooling was out of the question, even if there had been money for itтАФthat was for
men. All the professions were for men as well. There was nothing she could do, no
way her life could change. She was doomed to stay here in this once-loved house