The House of Women

De: C R Searle

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The title of this short story, The House of Women, is a metaphor for the life of women, or, perhaps more accurately, the perception women have of their lives. The reference to house is a shorthand, because no matter where women find themselves regardless of time, place or context, they are trapped, or feel they are trapped, in a world historically made by men and dominated by men.
An unbending unchanging world men control, their power ever-present in the theological, political, ideological and philosophical narratives they ceaselessly tell, as women don’t. Their lives once defined by domestic drudgery and endless pregnancies. A second sex they are imprisoned in the web of power, intrigue, ambition and self-enhancing delusion’s men weave, out of which there appears no way to escape. Stories modern women are beginning to resist but only a little and in 1805 it was a pipe dream.
A fact clearly understood and rejected where possible by women of intellect, ability and great beauty, women like Lady Carolyne Mulberry who, by fraudulent means, has taken possession of Mulberry Hall. Summarily evicting the Dowager Lady Mulberry and her two daughters, Edwina and Elspeth. Claiming, with the support of Lord Bixby, to be its rightful owner following her marriage to the now deceased Lord James Mulberry, who died last year.
Furthermore, claiming her son, Harry, born in the November of 1801 long after their brief affair had ended, was his son. His questionable legitimacy made legal by a compliant French revolutionary magistrate who signed a legal affidavit to say it was. Moreover, granting Harry rights of inheritance by an equally dubious retrospective order that could not be challenged whilst the war continued. But arriving at Mulberry Hall in the autumn of 1804, she discovered her late husband had so completely beggared the estate all she hoped to inherit was gone, had been sold to Captain Jack Shaw a Royal Navy officer presently at sea but soon to arrive.
A man of considerable mystery, the captain of a king’s ship, long away from England and long at war with the Emperor Napoleons France. A man of doubtless courage and surprisingly great wealth who she will not easily overcome. A man who she must defeat by any means at her disposal and will defeat him no matter what. But has she bitten off more than she can chew; her mother thinks so.