In het korte verhaal 'The Fifth of November' van Sylvia Townsend Warner zorgt Ellie, arbeidster in een tapijtfabriek, voor haar moeder, die dertig jaar armoede heeft gekend, nu in een rolstoel zit en doof is.
'For it was only in these last few years -- four years, six years? -- when deafness had closed her in, and given her the stunned, inattentive expression it was so painful to see, that acquaintances had begun to say she was wonderful for her age, and quite a character, and that Ellie would feel quite lost when she passed on.
This was the sort of acquaintance they were now reduced to -- people who thirty years ago would only have been deserving old dears for Mother to give port wine and blankets to, people to who it would be unconceivable that thirty years ago Mother walked on three-inch heels with the gait of a queen, subjugated everyone she met, and could kiss the wall behind her. Then, too, she was wonderful for her age -- but no one would have dared say so. This was the being whom Father deserted, going off with a smug slut whose petticoats dangled below her skirts. "I can do without him," Mother had declared. "Alimony is as good as matrimony at my age." It was a brave boast, and while the alimony lasted, it held. Then, during the slump, he died, penniless. She mourned him briefly and tempestuously, and afterwards began to pick holes in him.'
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