Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [2260]

I was supposed to get married and have babies and, if I were lucky, my husband would support me and I could stay home, wash the floor, and mind the babies. If I were a little less lucky, I would have to get a job, but a job that allowed me to dress nicely and stay clean all day. I would become a secretary, perhaps. My mother, who had only been permitted three years of education, was a maid. Housecleaning was all she knew how to do. Her dream for me was that I should become a secretary. My aunt, the nurse, thought I should become a nurse. The other two occupations most open to women during those years were grade-school teacher and social worker. … I knew enough, though, about secretaries, nurses, and teachers to know that for me, those jobs would be like a life sentence in hell. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 2260

Note

The future is rendered as an inventory of permitted options, and the dread comes from the audit itself — ‘the other two occupations most open’ sounds like a social-science report until it lands as a cage. The detail that her mother, with three years of schooling, dreams of secretaryhood for her daughter is the cruelest hinge: the aspiration is only one rung up the same ladder, and Butler states it flatly, without comment, letting the reader do the arithmetic.