The Homemaker Cluster
The housewife cluster is accepted and admired by the tone that folklore adopts, implying that a woman should be hardworking, a good daughter at first, then a good wife and a good mother, and a good keeper of the house. It is not questioned and it is supported from various directions. Sometimes the main character is a woman that is exceptionally good at these things and everything works out for her (i.e. she is able to find a good husband). On the other hand, sometimes the main character is a woman who is “lazy” for not being able to take care of the household and go to work and she is punished for that. Caring in itself is not a bad quality at all, in fact, it is an incredibly beautiful, important, and difficult role to play in the world. As Maria Tatar mentions in her 2021 book, The Heroine with 1001 faces, this is indeed an important quality of women characters across folklore systems around the world. She talks about how the care, empathy, strength, and intellect that it takes to stay at home need to be acknowledged way beyond the expression of fidelity and patience. It does need to be highlighted, but in an empowering and grateful way that recognizes the importance, the agency, and the responsibility that comes with being a caregiver.
In Bulgarian folklore, however, this role is just assumed and women are not praised in a way that is grateful and appreciative, but it’s rather the dynamic of “my wife and daughters need to stay at home, whereas I and my sons will go out and do fun heroic stuff. This is where they belong”. From the 100+ stories that I read, none of them were from a female perspective that shows the woman as an empowered main character. Yes, there are plenty of stories about girls and women, but they still present them as subjects and not conscious agents. For example, in the story about the Golden Girl, which serves as the basis for my collective housewife character, she just gets thrown around by various parties in her life (her father and stepmother who kick her out of the house, and then by the forest witch that takes her in) and the only actions she undertakes are to prove how diligently subservient and good she is in order to receive the approval either of her family or of the witch. The caretaking qualities are paired with being goodhearted, and beautiful, but also fragile and in the need of protection. In that same story, there is the other stepdaughter that is the antithesis of the golden girl, as she does not do chores, and is thus, evil. This is a structure that underlies a lot of the basic folktales, versions of which appear in multiple folklore collections and in the school curriculum. The underlying structure here is a female character that does not exit the universe of the home and is praised for the pre-approved set of characteristics (being kind, caring, hardworking, and beautiful in a fragile way).
| Title | Translated Title | Summary | Source |
| Златното момиче | The Golden Girl | The pretty, kind, and hardworking daughter is hardworking in a lot of situations and she is rewarded with gold, whereas the lazy stepdaughter is rewarded with disgusting creatures. | Source |
| Сливи за смет | Plums for trash | A bachelor is looking for a wife and he is casting through women bringing him bags of trash they collected in their houses. The plot twist is that they are looking for the smallest bag of trash (i.e. that the woman is extremely tidy). And the kind hardworking girl that has the tiny bag marries the man. | Source |
| Който не работи, не трябва да яде | Whoever doesn’t work, shouldn’t eat | A girl is married into a family. She has not worked her whole life and now she doesn't work either. The new family starves her until she starts working. | Source |
| Заспала е бяла Неда | White Neda fell asleep | Neda fell asleep on the field. She got kidnapped by three Turkish men and they told her that she will never see her family again. | Source |
| Драгано робиньо | Dragana the slave | Someone is asking Dragana why she is sad. She is saying that she is rushing to finish the work in this field so that she can go work in another field. | Source |
| Хубава Pада, гиздава | Pretty Rada, pretty | Rada was pretty but very unlucky. She cared for a lot of people and brought them back to life. But then she got sick and died because there was no one to help her. | Source |
| Седела яна седенкувала | Yana (can’t translate the rest) | Yana was preparing her dowry all night, but she was sick and she died in the morning. Her mother is mourning her in the morning and praises her for doing all the work and bringing water from the well. | Source |
| Янкин брат янка думаше | Yanka’s brother was talking about Yanka | Yanka’s brother tells her to take the horse to drink water. She is attached to the horse. The horse runs away and she can’t control it. She is upset that her brother is not there to save her. | Source |
| Чуваш ли Радо, гледаш ли | Are you listening, Rada, are you looking | [A guy is singing to Rada] He tells her that his mother organized a spinning contest. Rada completed much less than the other women, so his mother disapproves of their love and she doesn’t want them to get married. So, he suggests that they commit suicide together. | Source |
| Малка мома вада копа | Tiny girl is digging a ditch | A tiny girl is digging a ditch all by herself so that she can go water her garden. | Source |
Some of the underlying structures in the housewife cluster are that a good daughter/wife does not leave the daily routine of work in the fields and housecare, and she is exceptional at it. In the stories when the character deviates from this path even slightly(i.e. when Rada doesn’t spin as much as the others or when Neda fell asleep on the field), she is punished by society (Rada is rejected by her potential stepmother and Neda is kidnapped. In these examples, the underlying binary is good(hard work) vs bad (resting and hanging around). Characters that are on the wrong side of this binary communicate what will happen if you deviate from the pre-approved path. So, from these stories, we can distill a list of characteristics that a good woman should have:
- Family oriented (first your own family and then your husband’s family)
- Be pretty and kind in a slightly fragile way (so that you can live under the man’s wing)
- Be very hardworking and sacrificial, you want to take care of everyone. Hard work is a source of pride for you and your family
- You don't need a community, you don’t need help, and you don’t need to be saved. Martyrdom for the sake of hard work is welcome.
To go back to Tatar (2021), some of these qualities, like being hardworking, caring, and nurturing, would be wonderful, if there was some degree of agency and respect coming with them. Even though there is a lot of strength associated with being able to perform all this work, it seems like none of it is acknowledged in those tales. In fact, they chose to portray those characters as weak and fragile, still requiring the protection of the men around them - brothers, fathers, potential suitors, etc.