Does Feyre look down on housework?
Who was responsible for running the Archeron household?
Youâve all seen claims like:
«Nesta did all the housework/ cooked/ cleaned/ mended/ did the laundry» or
«Feyre is misogynistic, so she doesnât respect «womenâs» work and therefore never mentions it».
If you havenât seen these â Iâm glad for you. Good job, you need to take care of your eyes and minds. If you have â welcome. Hereâs our plan:
Identify what these beliefs are based on.
Try to debunk them or at least simplify them.
Provide examples that prove the opposite point of view, namely: «Feyre was involved in household chores».
You can claim anything you like. But if you want to back up a claim, you need some evidence. So what are the pillars these views rest on?
«Feyre was too busy hunting, so she didnât have time for household chores.»
«Feyre says in ACOMAF that she canât cook.»
«Feyre started hunting at fourteen, but they moved into the cottage when she was eleven. Someone had to cook for them during that time. And that someone was Nesta, because in ACOFAS Elain is only just learning to cook.»
«Feyre is misogynistic, which makes her an unreliable narrator, so she doesnât respect «womenâs» work and therefore doesnât mention it.»
Did I miss something? Of course. But letâs take a look at what was missed by those who love to make such claims.
1) «Feyre was too busy hunting, so she didnât have time for household chores.»
I absolutely love this claim: at first glance it seems perfectly logical â while one person brings in food outside the home, the others take care of the house itself. What would «household chores» mean for the Archerons? Cooking, cleaning, sewing, chopping wood, fetching water, doing the laundry. It looks like a kind of division: one works outside for the family, the other inside for the family. Idyllic.
But letâs look deeper. Chapter 2 of ACOTAR. Feyre comes home. A dialogue between her and Nesta:
«Can you make a pot of hot water and add wood to the fire?» [âŠ] «I thought you were going to chop wood today.»
«I hate chopping wood. I always get splinters.» [âŠ] «Besides, Feyre,» [âŠ] «youâre so much better at it! It takes you half the time it takes me. Your hands are suited for it â theyâre already so rough.»
(As you can see, Iâve left only the charactersâ lines: no narration, no Feyreâs inner thoughts â so no one can say this is her bias. Weâre using only what the characters themselves said.)
So whatâs the situation? Feyre came back and did part of her work. But the dialogue highlights several things:
Feyre is better at chopping wood;
Nesta doesnât want to chop wood;
they actually have a rotation for this task.
From here â a few counter-questions:
How can anyone claim Feyre didnât do housework because she was too busy hunting, when we are literally told she chopped wood?
If they had a rotation for that chore, why couldnât they have a similar rotation for other chores â cleaning, fetching water, laundry?
If Nesta feels free to tell her sister â the one who has already fulfilled her share of responsibilities (brought in food and the chance to earn money), and letâs not argue that Feyreâs work was the hardest both physically and emotionally â that she should also do household chores simply because Nesta doesnât like them⊠then tell me, what would have stopped Nesta from making the same demands about other chores?
And let me be clear: I do remember that Nesta eventually chopped wood. Iâm not trying to say Nesta did nothing around the house. Iâm only pointing out that Feyre also did household chores.
2) «Feyre says in ACOMAF that she canât cook.»
I adore this claim too â especially because of how quickly Feyre becomes a «reliable narrator» for the very same people who spend the rest of the time insisting sheâs unreliable. (Weâre not even talking about the moments when she praises someone they like â in those moments, sheâs also soo «reliable.»)
But all right, whatâs actually going on here? Chapter 55 of ACOMAF:
I avoided his stare, turning for the kitchen. «You must be hungry. Iâll heat something up.»
Rhys straightened. «Youâd â make me food?»
«Heat,» I said. «I canât cook.»
First, whatâs the context? Feyre spent her entire life in the mortal lands. If she cooked at all, she cooked the kind of food humans ate, prepared in the human way. But food in the lands of the Fae tastes different:
«If you ever come to Prythian, you will discover why your food tastes so different.» (Rhysand, ACOMAF, Chapter 24)
And Feyre says she «canât cook» to the man she loves, the man who matters to her. A man who, not only because of his race (High Fae), but also because of his upbringing and station, is used to refined cuisine. Naturally, the cooking knowledge of a girl from a family that couldnât even afford spices:
«From a block away, the scent of hot food wafted by â spices that tugged on the edge of my memory, beckoning. Elain let out a low moan behind me. Spices, salt, sugar â rare commodities for most of our village, impossible for us to afford.» (Feyre, ACOTAR, Chapter 3)
â would hardly allow her to prepare anything impressive for someone accustomed to exquisite food, especially when that someone was so important to her.
Second, Feyre often downplays her own skills. Feyre tells Tamlin she isnât good at painting:
«You like â art? You like to paint?»
«Yes. Iâm not â not any good, but if itâs not too much trouble... Iâll paint outside, so I donât make a mess, but â» (ACOTAR, Chapter 16)
But then here are Cassianâs words about her paintings:
«Cassianâs High Lady had a way of capturing the world that always made him pause. Her paintings sometimes unsettled him. The truths she portrayed werenât always pleasant ones. Heâd gone to her studio a few times to watch her paint. Surprisingly, she had let him. The first time heâd visited, heâd found Feyre tense at her easel. She was painting what he realized was an emaciated rib cage, so thin he could count most of the bones. When he spotted a familiar birthmark on the too-thin left arm beside it, he eyed the same mark amid the tattoo on her own extended arm, brush in hand. He merely nodded to her, an acknowledgment that he understood. He had never been as thin as Feyre during his own years of poverty, but he understood the hunger in each brushstroke. The desperation. The hollow, empty feeling that felt like those grays and blues and pale, sickly white. The despair of the black pit behind that torso and arm. Death, hovering close like a crow awaiting carrion. Heâd thought about that painting a great deal in the days afterward â how it had made him feel, how close theyâd all come to losing their High Lady before theyâd ever met her.» (ACOSF, Chapter 3)
And let me be clear: I am not claiming Feyre was a great cook. Not at all. They had no food, no teacher, no means to learn properly. Iâm only pointing out that using this situation as if it were definitive proof â is illogical.
3) «Feyre started hunting at fourteen, but they moved into the cottage when she was eleven. Someone had to cook for them during that time. And that someone was Nesta, because in ACOFAS Elain is only just learning to cook.»
Well, this could have been a strong argument â because you canât one hundred percent disprove it⊠But you also canât one hundred percent prove it either. We have no direct confirmation.
Someone might reasonably point out that certain things are meant to be understood not from context but from subtext â what the author layers between the lines. And I could agree with that: itâs possible Maas intended for Nesta to be the one who cooked, and it wasnât explicitly mentioned simply because the books focus on Feyre. I might have agreed â if we didnât already have a book about Nesta.
But we do have a book about Nesta â a book centered entirely on her: her past, her thoughts, her feelings, her motivations, her emotions. We learn a great deal about Nesta. We learn that she wasnât just her motherâs favorite, but also a victim of her motherâs attention and upbringing. That part isnât revealed in the original trilogy, but it is part of her story â an important part that explains so much, and therefore itâs given space in her own book.
So hereâs the logical question: if cooking, done exclusively by Nesta, was part of the subtext all along, then why, in a 700+ page book created to explore Nesta, is there not a single mention of her cooking in the cottage? Iâm not even asking for whole chapters â just a single line. Not even necessarily from Nesta herself, but perhaps from Elain. Yet thereâs nothing.
We do get a mention of letters â one short passage:
«Nesta had written letter after letter when theyâd fallen into poverty, begging her cousin Urstin to take them in. Theyâd gone unanswered, and then the money for postage had run out. Nesta still wondered if their cousin had ever learned what had become of the relatives sheâd ignored and left to die.» (ACOSF, Chapter 25)
Or a mention about water, which she and Elain had to share:
«After that, Nesta had been lucky to bathe once a week, thanks to the hassle of heating and hauling so much water to the lone tub in a corner of their bedroom. Sometimes, she and Elain had even shared the same bathwater, drawing straws for who went in second.» (ACOSF, Chapter 43)
But not a single word about cooking as part of her past? Maybe itâs simplest to accept that Nesta didnât cook. Or, if we want to keep everyone happy, letâs phrase it this way: Nesta wasnât the only one who cooked. If there was any cooking happening in the Archeron cottage at all â because frankly, it seems to me they (three single children) most likely just bought food that didnât require much preparation:
«When the ships sank, the creditors circled him like wolves. They ripped him apart until there was nothing left of him but a broken name and a few gold pieces to purchase that cottage. I was eleven. My father... he just stopped trying after that.»
«Thatâs when you started hunting?»
«No; even though we moved to the cottage, it took almost three years for the money to entirely run out,» [âŠ] «I started hunting when I was fourteen.» (ACOTAR, Chapter 18)
«I spied on hunters when I could get away with it, and then practiced until I hit something. When I missed, we didnât eat. So learning how to aim was the first thing I figured out.» (ACOTAR, Chapter 12)
And we also know that Feyre was the one who worked with the meat:
«Will it take you long to clean it?» Me. Not her, not the others. Iâd never once seen their hands sticky with blood and fur. Iâd only learned to prepare and harvest my kills thanks to the instruction of others.
«We can eat half the meat this week,» I said, shifting my gaze to the doe. The deer took up the entirety of the rickety table that served as our dining area, workspace, and kitchen. «We can dry the other half,» I went on, knowing that no matter how nicely I phrased it, Iâd still do the bulk of it. «And Iâll go to the market tomorrow to see how much I can get for the hides,» I finished, more to myself than to them. No one bothered to confirm theyâd heard me, anyway.
4) «Feyre is misogynistic, which makes her an unreliable narrator. Thatâs why she doesnât respect «womenâs» work and doesnât mention it.»
Iâm not going to waste time listing all the moments when Feyre admires feminine beauty, the beauty of dresses; how thrilled she is at what she feels for Mor (finally understanding what itâs like to have a female friend â and for the love of Goddess, donât you dare say thatâs a sign of misogyny. This child grew up in a household where she was neglected, with a sister who constantly belittled her. Of course Feyre had awful self-esteem, doubts about her own worth, and survival skills instead of friendship skills); or how Feyre is inspired by Azrielâs story when they learned to fly, about two female warriors and their courage.
No. Iâd rather draw your attention to this moment:
«I can work â help around the kitchen or in the gardens â to pay for it.» (ACOTAR, Chapter 16)
If, as so many people love to claim, Feyre is misogynistic and doesnât respect «womenâs work,» then why is the very first thing she offers to do in exchange for payment working in the kitchen or the garden? The supposedly «misogynistic» Feyre â who, they say, only ever did the «male» part of the work and had no respect for the «female» part â why does she immediately offer Tamlin labor in precisely those «female-coded» areas? She doesnât propose herself for any «male» role â which would have made sense if she truly were misogynistic, if she had spent her whole life doing only the «male» side of the chores and didnât know how to do the «female» ones. Strange, then, that this Feyre offers to work in the kitchen or the gardenâŠ
Now let me give some examples of moments when Feyre is, in one way or another, connected to household work:
Her brown eyes â my fatherâs eyes â remained pinned on the doe. «Will it take you long to clean it?» Me. Not her, not the others. Iâd never once seen their hands sticky with blood and fur. (ACOTAR, Chapter 2)
«I thought you were going to chop wood today.» [âŠ] «Besides, Feyre,» she said with a pout, «youâre so much better at it! It takes you half the time it takes me. Your hands are suited for it â theyâre already so rough.» (ACOTAR, Chapter 3)
«Do it outside,» I whispered, my voice trembling. «Not⊠here.» Not where my family would have to wash away my blood and gore. (ACOTAR, Chapter 4)
I can work â help around the kitchen or in the gardens â to pay for it. (ACOTAR, Chapter 16)
The finished product was chilling enough that I had to set aside the painting in the back of the room and go try to persuade Alis to let me help with the Fire Night food preparations in the kitchen. Anything to avoid going into the garden, where the Attor might appear. (ACOTAR, Chapter 20)
I made the bed, fixed breakfast, washed the dishes, and then stood in the center of the main living space. (ACOMAF, Chapter 52)
Nuala was already preparing lunch at the worktable; there was no sign of her twin, Cerridwen, but I waved her off as she made to take my dishes. «I can wash them,» I said by way of greeting. (ACOFAS, Chapter 1)
The goal of this post was not to prove that Nesta did nothing while Feyre did everything. No. The goal is to show that the claims «Feyre never did housework, Nesta did it all» are false.
To say â no, to insist â that all the work was done by Nesta (or by Nesta and Elain), while Feyre did nothing, means ignoring the passages that prove the opposite.
Subtext is great. But donât ignore the actual lines in the books and the context of the situations.
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