We ’re being mingy than we think when we call a fibre a “ baddie . ” But it ’s not the villain that we ’re contemptuous — it ’s an entire class of people .
helot , as they were know in the 1300s , were a stratum of churl broadly tied to the possessor of the domain they worked . They were n’t quite helot , but they were much closer to the bottom of the social pyramid than the top . ineffective to move off without favorable reception , they owe obligation on everything they used , and had to give a part of everything they bring on to the Edwin Herbert Land proprietor .
Some people feel for helot , but among the mellow lap of society , the term drive on a dyslogistic meaning . The aristocracy had an luxuriant codification of demeanour to which they adhered , desiring to maintain their honour . Villeins did not draw the benefit of that code of honor , both because it was more about vanity than ethical motive and because it was acknowledged that they were exclude from the very concept of honour . A villein had no honor to drop off , and did not need to be dealt with honourably . There seemed to be a mutual hostility between the high class and the down grade . Since only the high classes could read and write , we tend to get only their side of the conflict . They considered the bucolic to be stupid , sulky , and treacherous . One text about the peasantry , Le Despit Au Villain , contains the phrase “ From the villein comes all unhappiness . ”
That seems an precise modernistic assessment of baddie in stories — they usually do provide all the unhappiness in any consecrate story . Still , it ’s awfully tacky of us to essentially call them “ filthy peasants . ”
[ informant : A Distant Mirror , by Barbara Tuchman ]
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