I'm almost done reading The Bear and the Nightingale. The book takes place in medieval Russia.
The main character can see household spirits and talk to animals. Her step-mother can also see the household spirits - but she fears them as demons. In fact, we first see these characters - odd little Henson or Froud sounding creatures - from her point of view. The first described to the reader is a "demon" sitting on a stool in the corner mending a shirt. It seemed to me an oddly helpful and unobtrusive thing for a demon to be doing.
Later, when we see the same creatures met by Vasilisa, the main character, she is not afraid of them. She sees a little creature helping with the mending, and another tending the horses. I realized then that these were not "demons," but more like the brownies you have in old British* folk tales - helpful little creatures who come out at night when no one's around to tidy up around the house.
*I don't remember if brownies are from the Celtic or Saxon influence...
Granted, not all of the creatures that Vasilisa and her stepmother, Anna, can see are helpful or benevolent. Some are neutral - stay out of their territory and they won't bother you. Some are a little more sinister, though Vasilisa makes friends with rusalka and prevents her from drowning someone on at least two occasions. Then there is the Bear - the bringer of storms, pestilence, and fire; fear incarnate, essentially. Both Vasilisa and Anna can see him and are rightly terrified of him, though Vasilisa takes a more active approach against him and his minions in an attempt to protect her family and village.
There are many other times that Vasilisa takes the more active approach, and gets into trouble for it
Vasilisa has always been known as a little strange, as had her mother before her. While no one hears her speaking to the horses or sees her interacting with the household spirits, they can tell something is different with her. Certainly, her way with horses is uncanny.
People in the village start to distrust her more as she gets older, in part due to the goading of the new and charismatic priest that has come to the village. Things come to a head one day when her betrothed comes to take her home with him.
Vasilisa's fiance has a beautiful, but somewhat skittish and wild horse. Her own horse trusts her implicitly and lets her ride without saddle or bridle. Vasilisa also has a young and reckless nephew. Vasilisa and her betrothed are walking in the woods when they hear a commotion - her nephew has just vaulted onto her horse, throwing her into a panic. The mare runs away and, thinking only of her nephew's safety, Vasilisa jumps onto her finace's horse and races after him. No one but her finace has even been able to handle this horse, but he carries Vasilisa sure and true as if he's known her for years.
Vasilisa catches up with her panicked horse and rescues her nephew seconds before he would have been thrown as her horse leapt a ditch. The villagers who watched the scene react with trepidation. Even her finance is shaken. Vasilisa reacts in much the way the reader does - why is everyone upset? She did a good thing - neither nephew nor the horses came to harm. Why are people suddenly afraid of her?
Reading this scene, I thought it would be interesting to see what happened if you moved it to another place and time. If this scene took place in a historical fiction piece set in the 19th century on the American prairie, or in a Western, the main character would have been lauded. Here is a woman with good "horse sense," who doesn't lose her head in an emergency. She'd be a good one to have around in the event of a stampede or a raid. You'd have farmers and ranchers lining up to offer her work or a marriage proposal. Instead, you have her superstitious neighbors starting to wonder if she is a witch.
Certainly, much of her neighbors’ reactions come from the "a good woman is seen and not heard, and stays in the house" kind of mentality. I think it's interesting to see the different values of a time and place when I read historical fiction. If you had a young woman today who stood back and watched while her nephew was put in danger and didn't try to help, she would be seen in a more negative light than one who tried to take action and save him. But the society and culture of Vasilisa's time sees it as "wrong" for her to have reacted in such a proactive way.