Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a girl called Elizabeth.
She had many nicknames throughout her life; Liz, Lizzie, Eliza, Beth, Betty and many others which were not necessarily connected to the name given to her at birth. However, we will talk of our main character as Eliza or Elizabeth. She would probably prefer it that way.
When our story began – and it was so long ago that only few people remember it, and all of the rest knew the overrall story but got all of the details so very wrong – Eliza was a very young creature. Old enough to find a husband, that's for sure. But of course, it was not what happened to Eliza, for Eliza was not a good opportunity for a gentleman to marry.
You see, the thing is, Eliza grew up in a very small town, almost a village, in a wild and beautiful faraway country. That country was poor and many people lived badly and unhappily there, and Eliza's parents were no exception. They were traveling musicians with suspicious political motives who disappeared or died in a raging civil war when our heroine was merely six years old. After that sad thing happened and her parents were lost forever, Eliza spent four years in the countryside with her grandparents, eventually having to move to her aunt's place in a nearby town due to the sudden deathwish of her uncle. For him, it was necessary to take care of this child and her proper education, for he „owed that to his poor brother who disgraced the whole family when he left his native town and went playing music all over the country with that weird woman, Eliza's mother, but always had a good heart, and if he didn't strand like he did, he'd probably make a fine merchant". Eliza's uncle, as well as all men in the family except her father, was a rich merchant. After he died, all of his money was left to his wife and three children.
It was no happy childhood whatsoever. Eliza's aunt Wilhelma was rather indifferent to the girl; she considered her weird and unfitting. However, she did make her promise and brought over best governesses and teachers to work with the children. Wilhelma's two daughters liked their cousin at first, but after realizing Eliza was much smarter than any of them, they started to mistreat her and call her ugly. Wilhelma agreed with her children on the subject more than often. She was usually saying that the poor thing is „too skinny and pale and always so quiet, as if someone is going to bite her if she speaks as much as all of the other, normal children". Wilhelma thought Eliza had no character and no particular abilities, which was in exact opposite with all the things teachers were saying while describing the girl at the time. And as for the third child, it was Wilhelma's favourite, her son Ian, the oldest in the family. Ian was so used to his mother's praise that he started thinking very highly of himself although he wasn't particularly bright or talented. His appearance was fairly attractive but nothing that would take away anyone's breath. However, he did have one special ability, and he was developing it whenever he found it amusing or possible. It became the major source of his success later in life. He was a terrible bully.
His favorite target – oh yes, you got that right – was definitely Elizabeth. To be perfectly honest, Ian somehow liked her, but couldn't forgive her the fact that she was so bright and so willing to mock him everytime she felt he was being too smug or arrogant. That is precisely why he was always finding not-so-subtle ways to make the poor creature feel bad about herself. Ian's sisters rather enjoyed that. Even though the two of them were usually pretending as if they cared about their cousin, it was far from the truth and Eliza knew that. She didn't only feel misunderstood and unworthy of love in the house she grew up in; she fell as if she was monstrous, as if she was the most hideous thing in the whole world. Despite her physical weakness and fragility, sometimes she even thought she was downright bestial. Furthermore, Elizabeth was so unhappy...
... oh, but I know what you're thinking. A tale of woe, isn't it? You've heard it so many times before, haven't you?
Well, no, trust me, you haven't heard this one yet.
Anyway, to proceed with the story: Wilhelma had no desire to help Elizabeth in carving her own path through life. Laura and Marjorie, Elizabeth's cousins, were settled to get married as soon as possible. Knowing that she won't get married out of two simple reasons: she was ugly and she was never properly introduced to the society due to Wilhelma's lack of interest for her and Elizabeth's low opinion of herself caused by the cruelty of other children, which made Elizabeth never even having a wish to be introduced to society anyway, she decided to listen to the advice of her favorite governess Beatrice. When Beatrice announced she was leaving the family because she got the job in a big city, Elizabeth informed her aunt that she is leaving with her too. She explained to Wilhelma that her only wish is to become a governess as Beatrice, because she was so fond of learning and reading she couldn't even imagine there would be a better possible job for her in the world. Obviously, Elizabeth stuck her nose in a book to escape the mundane and ugly world of reality that happened to be way too provincial for wild bursts of her imagination. Mere thought of living in a real, big, exciting, stinky town, not an equally stinky, but incredibly boring village full of mediocres, was the only thing that kept the flame in her eyes alive throghout all those years of passivity, torture and lack of understanding she was forced to put up with.
As likely as it sounds, fat aunt Wilhelma gave the child her „blessing" as soon as Beatrice and Elizabeth told her what they were up to. The blessing meant she gave Eliza only enough money to keep her on life for three months or so, meaning she doesn't expect of her to come back and cry if the real world fails her. „You know nothing about it", said Wilhelma with a small evil smile in the left corner of her mouth while looking at the skinny and fragile child with the dreamy gaze that her niece was. „It is nothing like the books."
Elizabeth wanted to say something rude to her when she heard that, but Beatrice, who was holding her hand during the conversation, made a „don't" sign by squeezing her fingers, so she swallowed her pride „for the last time in her life", which was a thought she really believed in for she was naive indeed, said „thank you" to her family which actually meant „thank you on all the pressure and discomfort you were giving me all these years, thank you so very much, I hope you all end up burning in hell", and finally left her provincial way of living, knowing very well that now nothing is going to be the same ever again.
It was not the complete truth, of course. Some things were the same, at least in the beginning. Soon after moving in the town with Beatrice, Elizabeth realized that majority of other people were not much better than her family. Some of them were even worse, even more cruel, insensitive or calculating. Working as a governess, Eliza had to face many rich and spoiled folks who were giving birth to their some-day-to-be-even-richer and more spoiled kids. None of them were treating the girl with respect, regardless of how well she was doing her job. On the contrary, in the first house she went to, the mistress hated her because she thought Elizabeth was a threat to her intellectual ambitions; the lady in question published a considerable number of short novels and poems, and the poor quality of those didn't make her feel less proud of the fact that she was a part of a literary world; so witty and verbally superior Elizabeth was really pushing her buttons in the negative sense of the word. In short, town made Elizabeth understand she had to deal with all the things she had to deal at home too. Sometimes it was so overwhelming and frustrating that maybe she would break down and give up on everything, if one single thing didn't change as soon as she stepped into the world of adults. What was it?
Well... you probably would not expect it, but Elizabeth was not ugly as Wilhelma or Laura or Marjorie wanted her to think (Ian never really thought that in the first place, and was ever so mysteriously silent when a word was about his cousin's looks). All of them were fat anyway, which made them envious too. So, no. Elizabeth was not ugly. Elizabeth was a beauty. An exceptional beauty.
And apart from that, she was no fool either.
Regardless of how much Elizabeth hated her aunt Wilhelma, she had to admit one thing. Stupid old cow was right after all: life was so much different than books. Or, to put it more precisely, it wasn't that different if you looked better at it, but it was definitely more mundane, it was definitely more dirty than any book of high literature Eliza ever read, or at least that was what she thought (you know, she was very young indeed), and it definitely made you think of your two choices. And these are your two choices: either you're going to be manipulative and calculating just like everybody else in order to eat your bread and stay alive, or you're going to be eaten by everyone else who've learned their life lesson. As the matter of fact, maybe you'll be eaten literally, because there was a lot of criminal and savage murders going on at the streets at the time. So Eliza decided to eat others regardless of her natural sensitivity: slowly but surely, she started to take advantage of her good looks, her growing charm and confidence. Men started buzzing around her like flies; and though most of them were not exactly what one would consider first class gentlemen, they weren't penniless as well. Balancing between her old sensitiveness, shyness and wits and her new sense of reality and a knack for dealing with people from all walks of life, Elizabeth spent three tough years at the town - and managed to survive. She was never a real prostitute; she never really hurt anyone; she was merely trying to grow up all by herself, working as a mixture of governess and something of a professional coquette. Of course, there were nights, days, and even weeks when Eliza was so depressed that she could barely get out of small, sleazy apartment near the main street she shared with Beatrice. But after some time, she got used to her new ways of living and remained optimistic, thinking that someday, maybe she will find a nice employee who would keep her in one place longer than half a year. And, she was right. It happened quicker than she thought it will. In fact, what is going to be told is the story of Eliza's most instructive job experience. Yes, it definitely was the most instructive and most thorough job experience for Eliza...
.. but however instructive and thorough it was, it didn't make bitter story any sweeter. You can count on that.