I made the same associations as I read Truep's answer.
It also seems pretty reasonable to me that members of the for-lack-of-a-better-word criminal underclass would see being a cade-skiff as a respectable, important job (as Mildmay clearly does), while members of the overclass would not. The garbageman parallel is a useful one--in our world, working-class urban people are likely to see being a garbage collector as a good job: in most big cities, as well as many smaller communities, it's a municipal government job, with a strong union, providing job security and great benefits. And it's easier for urban poor people to realize how bad things would get, and how fast they'd get bad, if garbage isn't collected regularly. Upper-middle class people, on the other hand, think of garbage collecting as one of the worst jobs you can have, because you're out in all kinds of weather dealing with garbage all day, and even if they're aware that garbagemen have job security and great benefits (which they may or may not be), they don't see those things as scarce enough to be worth the stigma of dealing with garbage all day.
In Melusine, being a cade-skiff is a guild job, meaning there's job security, both in the sense that the job isn't going to disappear and that members of the guild have a status in the community that protects them from some of the dangers of being in the for-lack-of-a-better-word underclass. The guild also offers a sense of community, and of importance within the community, and opportunities to gain increased status and respect through moving through the ranks of apprentice, journeyman, and master. All of these things would seem to other members of the working- and criminal classes as very important benefits that may easily balance out the less than pleasant aspects of the job. Upper-class and respectable-working-class people, on the other hand, probably have access to enough other ways of gaining those significant advantages of security and status that dealing with dead bodies and the filthy Sim wouldn't seem worth it.
Wandering slightly afield, one thing I noticed as I was reading *Corambis* was the attention paid to the role of work, and the different kinds of work that people do. I'm thinking particularly of the woman who sells tickets at the train station, remarking that she likes her job because she gets to help people--that little scene made me go back and think about the way different jobs are portrayed throughout the series. In so much of fantasy, the only job categories that exist are Hero and Peasant: heroes save people, and peasants get saved. Even though all of the main characters except Mehitabel have fairly typical fantasy-world jobs (wizard, thief, soldier), the DoL books are populated with minor characters who have a variety of jobs, and we get enough little glimpses of them to have a real sense that these other jobs are just as interesting and important as the main characters' jobs.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2009-04-20 10:17 pm (UTC)It also seems pretty reasonable to me that members of the for-lack-of-a-better-word criminal underclass would see being a cade-skiff as a respectable, important job (as Mildmay clearly does), while members of the overclass would not. The garbageman parallel is a useful one--in our world, working-class urban people are likely to see being a garbage collector as a good job: in most big cities, as well as many smaller communities, it's a municipal government job, with a strong union, providing job security and great benefits. And it's easier for urban poor people to realize how bad things would get, and how fast they'd get bad, if garbage isn't collected regularly. Upper-middle class people, on the other hand, think of garbage collecting as one of the worst jobs you can have, because you're out in all kinds of weather dealing with garbage all day, and even if they're aware that garbagemen have job security and great benefits (which they may or may not be), they don't see those things as scarce enough to be worth the stigma of dealing with garbage all day.
In Melusine, being a cade-skiff is a guild job, meaning there's job security, both in the sense that the job isn't going to disappear and that members of the guild have a status in the community that protects them from some of the dangers of being in the for-lack-of-a-better-word underclass. The guild also offers a sense of community, and of importance within the community, and opportunities to gain increased status and respect through moving through the ranks of apprentice, journeyman, and master. All of these things would seem to other members of the working- and criminal classes as very important benefits that may easily balance out the less than pleasant aspects of the job. Upper-class and respectable-working-class people, on the other hand, probably have access to enough other ways of gaining those significant advantages of security and status that dealing with dead bodies and the filthy Sim wouldn't seem worth it.
Wandering slightly afield, one thing I noticed as I was reading *Corambis* was the attention paid to the role of work, and the different kinds of work that people do. I'm thinking particularly of the woman who sells tickets at the train station, remarking that she likes her job because she gets to help people--that little scene made me go back and think about the way different jobs are portrayed throughout the series. In so much of fantasy, the only job categories that exist are Hero and Peasant: heroes save people, and peasants get saved. Even though all of the main characters except Mehitabel have fairly typical fantasy-world jobs (wizard, thief, soldier), the DoL books are populated with minor characters who have a variety of jobs, and we get enough little glimpses of them to have a real sense that these other jobs are just as interesting and important as the main characters' jobs.