European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)
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Sharecropping family; Womens conditions
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I have always remembered the fact that when the landlord arrived in the courtyard,
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my mother told us younger children to go inside.
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I was really curious to see the landlord woman, all dressed up and carrying a small sunshade.
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She was the countess Carbonieri of Parma.
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Later I understood why we had to go inside.
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My mother didn’t want the landlord to see us kids who could not work yet.
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She didn’t want her to count how many cups of milk she would take out every morning to feed us.
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In the sharecropping contract, if four of us kids were not working, we were only more mouths to feed.
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My school only went up to the third grade.
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In order to do the remaining two years one had to go further away.
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This would have meant adding three more kilometres to the three I was already doing.
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It wouldn’t have been the biggest problem though.
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Most families thought that if they were to make sacrifices it had to be for the boys, not for the girls.
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It was customary, so I didn’t even think about it.
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After I had finished the third grade I was supposed to stay at home, as there was no money for me to continue.
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It was something we were
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used to hear and also understand.
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Traditionally, as you got married,
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you would have to carry what you learned as a woman at home into a new house, in a new family.
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