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

Belledarien, who had been Jannelle of the Jade Roof, was proud nonetheless. She
had stood in the door when it all wound to a close at last, just before sundown;
she had waved them on their way, standing tall and straight in the archway, her
cord as thick as a man's wrist, glowing a deep and noble scarlet, winding off
behind her into the Belledarien house's heart, pulsing with her mingled feelings
of joy and sorrow.

It was awful. Elizabeth of the Twin Towers, indeed! Sitting in the midst of the
fifty acres of land deeded to her by the government. Her house --with its two
absurd skinny little towers, like two budding horns on a ganglegoat -- unfolding
around her and growing day by day. Holding court. Joro swallowed bile each time
he thought of it, and he had known that it represented some sort of watershed
point that he must get past. He could not go on living under the discontented
eyes of his parents and listening to their complaints about his behavior. He had
to get away, be on his own, be his own man!

It baffled Joro that no woman would have him for husband. It made no sense. He
was a man of substance. He was a scientist with a growing reputation and a good
income. He was in splendid health, he knew he was not bad looking, he was proud
of the strong tall body that never failed him and that could certainly have
brought some sensible woman night after night of bliss. . . . What was the
matter with them all, turning him down one after another?

"It's your cursed tongue, Joro," his father was forever telling him. "Women are
choosy -- and rightly so. They can't go out, the way a man can, and get away
from their husbands; they have no choice but to stay inside the house. And if he
is pompous and arrogant and unkind, if he takes pleasure in making them
miserable, what are they to do? For women, my foolish thoughtless son, marriage
is a life sentence. Naturally they are careful who they choose to share that
sentence with! And naturally they don't want someone like you -- always
tormenting them, always making them cry, always yelling and pounding and
sneering and stomping about! Why would they? They're not idiots, you know, just
because they're female!"

And why did my mother want YOU, old man? Joro always thought, listening to this
tiresome song that he knew by heart. Why would any woman want YOU, you weakling?
He had seen his father, hundreds of times if he had seen him once, going out
into the night and any sort of weather on his mother's foolish errands. Did the
woman want a peach? Caleb Belledarien would be delighted to go get her one,
never mind what he might have been doing when the fancy took her. Did she want a
bolt of silk? Did her heart cry out for a flowered scarf? A book? A music box?
Whatever it was, Caleb would smile at his spoiled woman and touch her cheek, the
silly old fool, and out he would go with a smile on his stupid face with its
straggly beard never properly trimmed, to do her ladyship's bidding!

It wasn't going to be like that for joro. When he married, he would be the
authority in his household, let his wife be Someone of the One Hundred Towers
and Turrets and Gazebos. He would rule there, and she would do what he wanted.
His father knew nothing about women, that was his problem. Because he had found
a woman who was willing to take him in for her own purposes, to use him like a