124
" Your levity is unbecoming, Richard, and not at all the point,' Mrs Lowe said, giving him a stern look.'In another week, the Season will be upon us, and as you have chosen to come to Town for once, I shall expect you to find a little more time for your social and family obligations.'
'Oh, you may expect whatever you like, Aunt.' Mairelon's tone was careless, but there was a set to his shoulders that told Kim he was not pleased.
'People are already arriving, and I fear there are quite a few who are...confused about your proper standing'
'I can't imagine why. I'm the least confusing person I know. "
― Patricia C. Wrede
127
" - The local prince had gotten a notion that the girl could spin straw into gold, the dwarf said. Brainless young idiot, but they’re all like that. If she could spin straw into gold, why was she living in a hovel? Anyway, Gramps said he’d do her spinning for her in return for part of the gold and her firstborn child. She agreed, but naturally when the baby was born she didn’t want to give him up. So Gramps agreed to a guessing game: if she could guess his name, she could keep the baby. Then he let her find out what his name was. She kept the baby and Gramps kept the gold, and everyone went home happy.
- I think I’m beginning to get the idea, Cimorene said. It’s not just spinning straw into gold that’s a family tradition, is it? It’s the whole scheme.
The dwarf nodded sadly.
- Right the first time. Only I can never make it work properly. I can find plenty of girls who’re supposed to spin straw into gold, and most of them suggest the guessing game, but I’ve never had even one who managed to guess my name.
- Oh, dear, said Cimorene.
- I even changed my name legally, so it would be easier, the dwarf said sadly. Herman isn’t a difficult name to remember, is it? But no, the silly chits can’t do it. So I end up with the baby as well as the gold, and babies eat and cry and need clothes, and the gold runs out, and I have to find another girl to spin gold for, and it happens all over again, and I end up with another baby. It isn’t fair! "
― Patricia C. Wrede , Searching for Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles, #2)
132
" From what I’d written in “The Improper Princess” and from the history I’d given in Talking to Dragons, I already knew the general outline of her adventures, which, again, required someone smart, practical, and sure of herself. Explaining this occasionally confounds people who think that I wrote Cimorene as some sort of feminist statement about what women can achieve. I find their surprise hard to understand. My real-life family and friends are full of women like Cimorene, from my twin cousins, who have been fur trappers in the Alaskan bush for most of their lives, to my mother, who became an engineer long before women’s liberation officially opened “nontraditional careers” to women, to my grandmothers, aunts, and cousins, who were office managers, farmers, nurses, nuns, geologists, and bookkeepers, among other things. None of these women takes any guff from anyone. They aren’t proving a point about what women could, should, or can do; they are ignoring that whole question (which none of them considers a question worth asking at all) and getting on with doing the things that interest them most. "
― Patricia C. Wrede , Dealing with Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles, #1)
136
" DEEP IN THE ENCHANTED FOREST, in a neat gray house with a wide porch and a red roof, lived the witch Morwen and her nine cats. The cats were named Murgatroyd, Fiddlesticks, Miss Eliza Tudor, Scorn, Jasmine, Trouble, Jasper Darlington Higgins IV, Chaos, and Aunt Ophelia, and not one of them looked anything like a witch’s cat. "
― Patricia C. Wrede
