"Elgin, Suzette Haden - Only A Housewife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

Elizabeth Marana Belledarien. His little sister, who no more than three months
ago had wept bitterly as Joro held one of her favorite dolls high above her head
out of her reach and pulled its luxuriant hair, one hair at a time, out of its
silly head. And now, almost without warning, certainly without logic or even
common sense, this pathetic girlchild was to be transformed into a woman, fully
adult by law and by custom! She was to have property of her own. To be installed
in the midst of a handsome plot of land. To be called upon by neighbors, all
eager to make her acquaintance in her new role. She was to be mistress of all
she surveyed, responsible to no one. She was to be free to do exactly as she
liked until she made her choice of husband from among the other young men like
himself, who would be courting her in their frantic need to get away from their
parents. While Joro stayed behind, living under his mother's roof like a little
boy, saying "Yes Mother," and "I'm very sorry, Mother," and "Father, I deeply
regret displeasing you yet again."

It was not bearable. He could not stand it. He didn't require his father's
constant reminders to bring home to him how degrading it was.

Little Elizabeth . . . . Joro had been almost fond of her, before, but he hated
her now, from the depths of his heart. They had given her her woman-name for the
ceremony; Elizabeth of the Twin Towers, she was to be called. For the house that
had begun to enfold her, its cord still no thicker than a supple young vine
sprouting from her hip, was apparently going to be something spectacular.

On the day of the puberty ceremony, Elizabeth had sat serene and proud (Why not?
Who wouldn't have been serene and proud, with her luck?) accepting the gifts of
their assembled relatives and friends. While Joro fumed and seethed and wished
she would drop dead on the spot, preferably of something agonizingly painful
that would turn her into an entirely repulsive corpse. Her house, about which so
much fuss was being made, was barely large enough to provide her with minimum
shelter. No one else, no matter how passionately he might have wanted to pursue
her, could possibly have gone inside it.

But even on the day of celebration it had already been obvious that the house
was too large and substantial to fold away under Elizabeth's clothing any
longer. Joro's parents were modern in their ideas -- they would no more have
thought of binding the house tight to her body to keep her longer at home than
they would have eaten raw meat. It was the first time in his life that Joro had
ever wished that his mother and father were more old-fashioned, more
conservative, less willing to keep up with the times. He would have bound
Elizabeth's house down with a wire tight enough to strangle it, if he'd been
given a chance. But of course he had no chance! Nobody had had the decency even
to ask him what his preferences were. As usual, he was treated abominably, and
there was not one thing he could do but stand by and watch while Elizabeth
preened and blushed and his parents beamed with pride and pleasure in their
daughter.

His mother wept to lose her youngest daughter so prematurely, of course, knowing
that she would never again be able to see her in the flesh. But everyone at the
ceremony and the obscenely lavish party that followed could see that Jannelle