영어로 읽는 고전 _ 캐슬린 톰슨 노리스의 보물
캐슬린 톰프슨 노리스의 『The Treasure』는 20세기 초에 쓰인 소설이다. 이야기는 솔즈베리 집안, 그중에서도 샐리 솔즈베리 부인을 중심으로 펼쳐진다. 그녀는 리지라는 하녀를 두고 살림을 꾸려 가면서, 질서를 지키고 씀씀이를 줄이는 일의 어려움과 씨름한다. 서사는 가사 관리의 복잡함과 함께, 그 시절 여성들이 마주했던 계급과 가정살이의 문제를 넌지시 드러낸다.
책의 첫머리는 독자를 솔즈베리 집안의 살림살이 한복판으로 데려간다. 매사에 꼼꼼한 솔즈베리 부인과, 물건을 헤프게 쓰는 하녀 리지 사이의 갈등이 두드러진다. 리지의 부주의 탓에 식료품 값이 늘어나는 것을 부인이 근심하는 동안, 가족들의 모습도 하나씩 드러난다. 딸 알렉산드라는 집안일에 도무지 관심이 없고, 두 아들은 각자의 일에만 몰두해 있다. 이렇게 서사는 사회적 기대, 변해 가는 성 역할, 그리고 효율적인 살림을 향한 갈망이라는 주제를 다룰 준비를 갖춘다. 그리고 마침내 저스틴이 도착한다. 가정학교를 졸업한 이 여성이 바로 제목이 가리키는 "보물"이며, 그녀의 등장은 이 가족에게 희망인 동시에 새로운 곤란을 함께 가져온다.

Classics Read in English _ The Treasure by Kathleen Thompson Norris
The Treasure, by Kathleen Thompson Norris, was written in the early years of the twentieth century. It is a domestic novel in the most literal sense: its territory is a kitchen, a grocery account, and the daily question of who does the work in a middle-class American house. Mrs. Sally Salisbury runs that house, and she is not running it well ? chiefly because of Lizzie, the servant whose carelessness has been quietly enlarging the bills for months.
Norris opens inside this friction. Mrs. Salisbury is exacting by temperament; Lizzie is not, and neither woman can quite say what she means to the other. Around them the family goes about its business with a serene indifference to how any of it is accomplished. Alexandra, the daughter, has no interest whatever in housekeeping. The two sons are absorbed in concerns of their own. It is the sort of arrangement that works only so long as one woman is willing to hold it together by force of attention.
Then Justine arrives ? trained at a school of domestic science, capable, methodical, and entirely unlike anyone the Salisburys have employed before. She is the treasure of the title. She is also, as the family discovers, a person with terms of her own, and her presence raises questions about class and household work that this comfortable house had not expected to answer.

In the body of the text
Lizzie, who happened to be the Salisbury's one servant at the time, was wasteful. It was almost her only fault, in Mrs. Salisbury's eyes, for such trifles as her habit of becoming excited and "saucy," in moments of domestic stress, or to ask boldly for other holidays than her alternate Sunday and Thursday afternoons, or to resent at all times the intrusion of any person, even her mistress, into her immaculate kitchen, might have been overlooked. Mrs. Salisbury had been keeping house in a suburban town for twenty years; she was not considered an exacting mistress. She was perfectly willing to forgive Lizzie what was said in the hurried hours before the company dinner or impromptu lunch, and to let Lizzie slip out for a walk with her sister in the evening, and to keep out of the kitchen herself as much as was possible. So much might be conceded to a girl who was honest and clean, industrious, respectable, and a fair cook.
But the wastefulness was a serious matter. Mrs. Salisbury was a careful and an experienced manager; she resented waste; indeed, she could not afford to tolerate it.