Historically and in the country, on the estates, farms, and plantations, the assets lived in a fenced or walled compound with a single gate. The compound was divided in halves by a ditch running parallel to the gate wall. The gateside was the men’s quarters, the inside was the women’s. Children lived on the inside, until boys reaching working age (8 to 10) were sent over to the longhouse. Women lived in huts, mothers and daughters, sisters or friends usually sharing a hut, two to four women with their children. The men and boys lived in gateside barracks called longhouses. Kitchen gardens were maintained by the old people and small children who did not go out to work; the old people generally cooked for the working people. The grandmothers ruled the compound.
Cutfrees (eunuchs) lived in separate houses built against the outside wall, with a surveillance station on the wall; they served as Compound Bosses, intermediaries between the grandmothers and the Work Bosses (members of the owner family, or hired gareots, in charge of the working assets). Work Bosses lived in houses outside the compound.
The owning family and their ownerclass dependents occupied the House. The term House included any number of outbuildings, the Work Bosses’ quarters, and animal barns, but specifically meant the family’s large house. In conventional Houses the men’s side (azade) and the women’s side (beza) were strictly divided. The degree of restriction on the women reflected the wealth, power, and social pretension of the family. Gareot women might have considerable freedom of movement and occupation, but women of wealthy or distinguished family were kept indoors or in the walled gardens, never going out without numerous male escorts.
A number of female assets lived on the women’s side as domestics and for use of the male owners. Some Houses kept male domestics, usually boys or old men; some kept cutfrees as servants.
In factories, mills, mines, etc., the compound system was maintained with some modifications. Where there was division of labor, all male compounds were controlled entirely by hired gareots; in all female compounds the grandmothers were allowed to keep order as in country compounds. Men rented to the all male compounds had a life expectancy of about 28 years. During the shortage of assets caused by the slave trade to Yeowe in the early years of the Colony, some owners formed cooperative breeding compounds, where bondswomen were kept and bred annually, doing light work; some of these “breeders” bore a baby annually for twenty or more years.
Rentspeople: On Werel, all assets were individually owned. (The Corporations of Yeowe changed this practice; the Corporations owned the slaves, who had no private masters.)
In Werelian cities, assets traditionally lived in their owners’ households as domestics. During the last millennium it became increasingly common for owners of superfluous assets to rent them to businesses and factories as skilled or unskilled labor. The owners or shareholders of a company bought and owned individual assets individually; the company rented the assets, controlled their use, and shared the profits. An owner could live on the rental of two skilled assets. Thus rentsmen and rentswomen became the largest group of assets in all cities and many towns. Rentspeople lived in “union compounds” — apartment houses supervised by hired gareot Bosses. They were required to keep curfew and check in and out.
(Note the difference between Werelian rentspeople, rented out by their owner, and the far more autonomous Yeowan freedpeople, slaves who paid their owner a tithe or tax on freely chosen work, called “freedom rental.” One of the early objectives of the Hame, the Voe Dean underground asset liberation group, was to institute “freedom rental” on Werel.)
Most union compounds and all city households were gender-divided into azade and beza, but some private owners and some companies allowed their assets or rentspeople to live as couples, though not to marry. Their owners could separate them for any reason at any time. The mother’s owner owned the children of any such asset couple.
In the conventional compound, heterosexual access was controlled by the owners, the Bosses, and the grandmothers. People who “jumped the ditch” did so at their peril. The owner mythideal was of total separation of male and female assets, with the Bosses managing selective breeding, chosen stud asset males servicing the females at optimal intervals to produce the desired number of young. Female assets were mainly concerned, on exploitive farms, to avoid undesired breeding and yearly pregnancy. In the hands of benevolent owners, the grandmothers and cutfrees often could protect girls and women from rape, and even allow some affectional pairing. But bonding was discouraged both by the owners and the grandmothers; and no form of slave marriage was admitted by law or custom on Werel.