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Kill for not knowing how to read and write

2022-06-15T10:41:09.733Z


The contempt of those who know about those who do not continues to be surprisingly celebrated, often to the point of thinking that, if they call you an idiot, you will stop being one because the person who writes it does so with a vee


"Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she couldn't read or write" is the first sentence of Ruth Rendell's

A Judgment in Stone

, a novel that answers, right from the start, the questions of who, what and why.

Of course, it's a mystery novel: why should a book start like that?

In

An Editorial Poetics

(Trama, 2022), Constantino Bértolo dedicates several pages to him in which he begins reasoning that, as a consequence of his crime, Parchman's illiteracy was known not only by the family he served, but throughout the country.

But what Bértolo does in his essay is not dwelling on the crime, but rather on the “deformity” that Parchman suffers from, in the opinion of the narrative voice of the book, on the “misfortune” that she avoided discovering and how impossible it was for her. life, even, to act as a housekeeper.

"Words are fragile and, therefore, in everything that affects their transportation, writing, editing and reading, it is advisable to act with caution and not take anything for granted."

The voice that tells the story of Eunice Parchman says that the cultured and enlightened family she served would have lived if its members were uneducated and vulgar.

Ruth Rendell knew something about human disorders;

For years she received letters from women wishing for the death of her husband, violent or not, so that she could marry Inspector Wexford, one of her most famous characters.

In

A Stone Trial

she also tells the story of a crime that is less noisy and more effective than the murder of an entire family: the one that derives from the class struggle.

From the inability, specifically, of a higher class for her not even to understand, but to communicate, with the lower class.

Eunice Parchman kills everyone, adults and children, as they prepare to watch an opera on television,

Don Giovanni

.

When Claude Chabrol made the novel into a film (

The Ceremony

, 1995) made television play an essential role: the maid uses it in her room to watch junk TV;

the family uses it to put on operas.

And when the protagonist arrives by train to start her new job, she does so by appearing on the wrong side of the tracks.

Everything is going wrong, everything is going to be worse.

"And the ridicule that the physically handicapped used to produce, should be directed today, perhaps with more justice, towards the illiterate," says the narrator of

A Stone Judgment

.

Of course, behind the illiteracy of the assassin Eunice Parchman there is an unfortunate history that prevented her from schooling.

In the same way that behind each serious misspelling or cultural black hole, ignorance of the most basic teachings, there is usually behind a prolonged tragedy in time, almost always related to time and money.

The festive and hurtful contempt not only of class, but also of those who know about those who don't (write well, speak well, use escalators, use silver cutlery, butcher a corpse), continues to be surprisingly celebrated, often even thinking that, if they call you an idiot, you're going to stop being an idiot because whoever writes it does so with a vee.

Eunice Parchman's sick mind was crushed not by the possibility of mockery, but by the truth,

that he knew he could be mocked for being, in his eyes and those of the world, a monstrosity.

To the point that, when one of the Coverdale daughters discovers her secret, she does not value the possibility that Parchman cannot read because she has not learned, but she believes that she suffers from an illness.

With that he doesn't want to hurt her, he just shows something that hurts her even more than a joke: misunderstanding.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-06-15

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