We were having an interesting discussion over at the Cartomancy Forum and I thought I’d post it here. Longish, meandering version: Donna Maritata
Short version: somebody wrote a bogus book (that will sell nonetheless, because there’s next to nothing in english) that “updated” the Sibilla’s Donna Maritata (Married Woman) to “Independent Career Women”.
And THAT, friends, totally loses the card essence.
She’s a person card, and she’s married or in a committed relationship (with a human, not a business), Giovine Fanciulla is young, Nemica is malicious, and so forth. Very simple. Cards that depict various livelihoods might describe her, but they could just as easily describe any of the other people cards.
Anyway, if you made her “independent”, you’d need another card for a stay at home mom, one for a woman drawing unemployment, one for a woman collecting disability, etc. And you’d have to do that with all the other people cards. Giovine Fanciulla as a working girl, a trust fund kid, a young kept mistress, etc. The damn deck would be a couple of feet thick. Just learn to read combinations. FFS.
Anyway, people go to jobs to get money. If a better job comes along, they leave and go to that one. We don’t give a shit about The Company – why should we? They don’t give a shit about us. Fuck them. We work because we don’t have a choice, other than homelessness.
And when we get home, we still have as much housework staring us in the face as a postwar housewife. We just don’t have the time or energy to do it as well as Mom did. (My generation’s moms used to iron sheets. SHEETS. I barely get to iron anything.)
I would certainly hope that everyone cares about their family much more than they care about some sociopathic corporation with no ethics, that just wants to work them down to a crippled up pile of nothing and throw them away like garbage.
Trust old Stella – it’s better to be nice to your kids than your supervisor. And never, ever assume that the Important Things have evaporated just because we’ve been forced into the workplace!