I have always passed these factory gates on my way to work. Only, there was a time when I passed through them. When I went to a respectable job. When I had a chance.
What must my poor little girl being going through? I am a horrible mother. Misery cannot support a child. I make so little now. I was never meant for a life like this.
I don't know how to make myself look like a better catch than all of the other women stationed along this dirty street. Certainly I am far less pretty than these others. Uglier. Times are hard for everyone.
That self-righteous, haughty Madeleine! It is wrong that one man should hold such power in a town. Even in a little place like this, a few words from him have caused such suffering.
I curse his name as I try to sleep alone in my own little room, bare but for a mattress. Men don't have enough money to stop for any of us, with the situation in Montreuil-sur-Mer as bad as it is. Had he thought, even for a moment, of what his damned law-upholding piety would do to me!
I buried my son this morning. There was not enough food. My husband is gone to find work in another town, but I know he will never return. Without the factory, without Monsieur Madeleine, this town is hopeless. There are not enough jobs. There is only chaos.