Cruel Maid ƒ

"A maidservant or in current usage maid is a female employed in domestic service. Once part of an elaborate hierarchy in great houses, today the maid may be the only domestic worker that upper and even middle-income households can afford. In the Western world, comparatively few households can afford live-in domestic help, usually compromising on periodic cleaners. In less developed nations, very large differences in the income of urban and rural households and between different socio-economic classes, fewer educated women and limited opportunities for working women ensures a labour source for domestic work.

"The common assumption about Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca figures the first Mrs. de Winter as a secretly conniving manipulator who had convinced the world that she was as morally flawless as she was beautiful. According to the second Mrs. de Winter, the narrator of the novel, Maxim murdered Rebecca justifiably: only he knew the true, corrupt Rebecca. What if, however, Maxim is the one who is lying, and Rebecca was as good as reputation held her, if his jealousy was the true motive for her murder?"

"Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O! prepare it.
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it."

Title art by Bill Ward.

"In the serenade that Altisidora sings to Don Quijote (II.44)6, there is an allusion to “La Sola,” the peerless jewel of the crown that had been fished up in the Southern Sea and then lost forever when the palace in Madrid burned. Altisidora mentions the priceless stone when trying to woo Don Quijote; she tells him in her serenade that her love for him is so powerful."