![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Assuming that someone can vouch for the writer and her husband, and that they won't brawl or get drunk, Emerence will decide her pay once she sees how slovenly her new charges are. ![]() But when she arrives for her interview, it turns out that this big-boned, powerfully built woman who radiates strength like a Valkyrie is there to conduct her own assessment. The elderly caretaker Emerence comes with perfect references: she can be trusted not to steal or set fire to the house, and is beyond boyfriend problems. In The Door, Hungary's most famous living author, Magda Szabó, gives a rare insight into the precarious relationship between the "lady writer" and her woman who does. Centuries later, and with cash to spare, the great-granddaughters of Shakespeare's sister have been solving this problem with hired help. There are no 17th-century female poets, she wrote, because "Shakespeare's sister" was too busy mending stockings or watching the stew. It was Virginia Woolf who first drew attention to the relationship between creative output and domestic chores. ![]()
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