In Chapter 11, when
Daniel begins to live with his sister after their grandmother's death, he is surprised to learn
that Leah is not as weak and helpless as he thought she was. Firstly, he learns that she is an
expert weaver who is paid well by clients for the skill in her work. Secondly she is able to
bake bread and thirdly she knows how to tend a garden. This causes Daniel to radically reassess
his own thoughts and feelings about his sister:
Without
the faintest idea of what had really gone on in that dim shuttered house behind the
cheesemakers, he had taken for granted that Leah had lost her wits on the terrible night of her
childhood. Was he any better, he thought now with shame, than the neighbours who would have tied
her with ropes?
Leah thus shows herself to be far more
capable than Daniel would ever have imagined, and he is shocked to see what she is able to do
and also disturbed by his own prejudice and assumptions about his sister, who clearly has
aspects to her character that he is completely unaware of.
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