Frau William Tell Makes Apple Cake

It seemed like an ordinary day. Cléofé had gotten up at dawn to minister to William and her two sons, Walter and Benjamin. The house was in order, the linens washed and put back in the trunks, the lunch prepared. She sat down on a bench out front to rest a while – a rest she felt she had fully earned by all those nights up with the children, all those days working in the house and the fields. Soon it would be harvest time.

It was a pleasant summer. A warm breeze wafted gaily in the air. The transparent lake, the flock of sun-filled chalets, the gently rolling meadows dotted with appletrees, the white mountaintops which blended with the cherry blossoms against the green grass, all of this should have filled her primal Swiss heart with gladness. Switzerland milks its cows and lives peacefully.

Nonetheless Cléofé felt overwhelmed with sadness, as though she were gazing not upon her native land with all its flowers and birds, but upon vast sheets of ice. The shepherds' song announced an impending storm, the cowbells clanged like a call to arms. The wind had shifted; now it was blowing across the mountain and was sure to make her William wild. Furious indeed would he be to learn that Cléofé's body had once again refused to comply. William wanted her to give him a little Heidi who would bring joy to his old age, but she knew all too well what that meant. She had decided not to have any more children, unless she could deliver a little Germaine.[1] She ached for a daughter who would avenge her, her and all the other women like her who had only babies and illusions to nurture. But since Cléofé was a mere woman, she could only continue to obey, to bend to his wishes, and make him believe he was Master.

Strengthened by these heady thoughts, she decided to ask William to bring her to the ceremony. Women were normally not allowed in the square for political gatherings, but this was a holiday, perhaps they could make an exception. She wanted to see that stranger again, the bailiff Gessler. He was so well dressed, his beardless face looked so smooth, the smell of him was so different from the odor of cattle cast off by her robust husband.

These mountain men were proud to have preserved the simple, honest, virtuous ways of their forefathers. But virtue didn't prevent them from getting drunk at the tavern or from beating their wives and children soundly if the eggs or bread weren't done just right. The stranger, on the other hand, was courteous and friendly, polite with women, gentle with children. Of course, he did seem a little effeminate in his embroidered suit, but still she wouldn’t have minded bearing children who looked like him. Walter and Benjamin were real little men: brutal and willful. Later on, they would show their wives who was boss. She resented their maleness, although she gloried in her clan of men. Her love was mixed with jealousy, scorn, hatred and pride. Yes, she cried with rage and helplessness when beaten, but she nevertheless bragged about her men's virility to her neighbors and friends. And whenever one of the women spoke out against her husband publicly, she immediately set her straight by remonstrating that in this vale of tears, everyone had to serve one master or another. A woman’s role, she affirmed piously, was to honor and wait upon her husband. If the word "Swiss" ["Suisse"] stood in men's case for liberty, great white snowy mountains, the fatherland and its defense, the feminine, “Suissesse,” conjured up domesticity, obedience and the family cocoon.

Since she desired both to have her freedom and to obey, Cléofé had to agree with William when he refused to defy the state and take a woman to the square on a non-market day. She felt some resentment, but had to admire her intrepid archer's strength of character. Men and women had each their separate values, after all. So she went back into her chalet to make an apple cake. She asked her younger son -- he was the more helpful of the two -- to run to the neighboring orchard to buy a bushel of green apples. Benjamin completed his mission straight away but took it upon himself to return home by way of the town square where he would find his father and Walter.

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[1] Germaine de Staël (1766-1817), French noveliest and essayist, exiled by Napoleon for her political opinions, traveled a great deal and resided at Coppet near Geneva where she wrote extensively and exchanged ideas with the most important European intellectuals of her day.