Script Notes: Gender

Depiction of a society with very rigid gender divisions, based on traditions of labour-intensive work and the large families normal in a world without widespread birth-control. Without electrical or petrol driven machinery, potential muscle-power defines most of the tasks allotted to men and women.

Powered agricultural machines are few and far between: the threshing machine is the only example in the book. All other work is powered by horses or by men's muscles. The men therefore must have a great understanding of horses and how to work with them, as well as being physically very strong and resilient, and capable of endlessly repetitive very heavy labour with hand tools.

The women run the household and bring up the children. This must be achieved without the electrical machines we take for granted today _ water had to be boiled over a fire, food cooked in ovens heated by wood or peat fires, clothes washed by hand in tubs, floors swept with brooms. Kitchen gardens would be tended to provide a small variety of vegetables, and bread was baked in the farm kitchen. Without modern refrigeration and supermarket distribution systems, there was no convenience food ready-prepared for quick and easy cooking. As with the men and their outdoor work, women are faced with a repetitive, time-consuming, sometimes intricately complicated, and frequently physically exhausting, work.

Chris has to abandon her education after her mother's death, to take over the farm household. Her growing mastery of the skills required is recognized in the praise she receives while helping Kirsty at the threshing.

Opportunity for independence in such a society is very limited. Most peasant-farming families need their teenage children's muscle-power to help work the farm. Education beyond the early teens is restricted to those who are conspicuously bright, and who might find a future in the professions. To become a doctor or a teacher is particularly respected, as the importance of these professionals is obviously beneficial to the community.