Wednesday Reading Meme
Jan. 23rd, 2019 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I finished Enid Blyton’s The Secret Island, which scratched the Boxcar Children sized itch in my soul: four children escape an untenable home situation to create for themselves a delightful home in the wilderness.
I also completed Unnatural Death, which has only reaffirmed my belief that the non-Harriet Lord Peter novels are not nearly as good, although I plan to plow ahead regardless.
What I’m Reading Now
I’m nearing the end of The Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. Lots of good stuff here about illegitimacy rates in Revolutionary War-era New England; lots of women giving birth within a few months (sometimes a few days) of their wedding, and not an insignificant quantity who have an illegitimate child and get married a few years later, maybe to the father and maybe not. Often women from comfortable families, too, including one of Martha’s daughters - this wasn’t just a matter of the poverty-stricken.
It’s interesting how at odd this pattern is not only with modern views of the monolithic past, but even from the popular novels of seduction at the time. Ulrich notes that many of these novels were published in the US, written by American authors, following the English model that assumes the seduction will destroy the seduced girl - and people ate it up even though it was at odds with the lived reality in America, or at least in New England. Was it even the reality in England? Perhaps just among the gentry?
It occurs to me that these novels may in fact have made the plight of the seduced girl worse, by making everyone expect that her plight would be wretched and therefore making that fate harder to escape.
I’ve already begun research for my next essay about female literary friendship (this time: Annie Fellows Johnston, writer of the Little Colonel books, and her Louisville writing group), which means that I’ve dived into George Madden Martin’s children’s book Emmy Lou: Her Book and Heart, first published in 1902. (George Madden Martin was a penname for a woman whose given name may have been Georgia May, but the internet is not quite clear about this.
Naturally what I’d really like is a book with a dedication like “To my writing group! You guys are great!” (only more Edwardian and flowery). This is not that book, but I’m enjoying (in a horrified way) this tale of Emmy Lou’s school days: she’s in a class of seventy and they spend their days droning through the primer in unison, mat, cat, bat, etc.
Oh! And Odysseus just slaughtered the suitors and also the maids who slept with them (which seems kind of hard on the maids, I mean you slept with Calypso for seven years, Odysseus), and it was way more violent than Wishbone led me to expect. And now he’s all “People are going to be mad about how I slaughtered all the suitors” and it’s like… well, if even the people in your own culture don’t approve, why did you do it, Odysseus? Why not just kick them out of the house and demand they send you herds of cattle to replenish your stock and maybe raid them if they don’t comply?
What I Plan to Read Next
Now that I’ve listened to both the Iliad and the Odyssey, I’m contemplating whether I should give the Aeneid a go too… although I did lose some enthusiasm for this plan when I realized that Dan Stevens hasn’t read it for audiobook. Still, it might be worth doing? There’s an audiobook read by Simon Callow.
(I realized only as I was looking up Simon Callow that for years I have conflated him and Simon Cowell. Sorry, Simon Callow! You’ve probably never berated a reality TV contestant in your life.)
I finished Enid Blyton’s The Secret Island, which scratched the Boxcar Children sized itch in my soul: four children escape an untenable home situation to create for themselves a delightful home in the wilderness.
I also completed Unnatural Death, which has only reaffirmed my belief that the non-Harriet Lord Peter novels are not nearly as good, although I plan to plow ahead regardless.
What I’m Reading Now
I’m nearing the end of The Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. Lots of good stuff here about illegitimacy rates in Revolutionary War-era New England; lots of women giving birth within a few months (sometimes a few days) of their wedding, and not an insignificant quantity who have an illegitimate child and get married a few years later, maybe to the father and maybe not. Often women from comfortable families, too, including one of Martha’s daughters - this wasn’t just a matter of the poverty-stricken.
It’s interesting how at odd this pattern is not only with modern views of the monolithic past, but even from the popular novels of seduction at the time. Ulrich notes that many of these novels were published in the US, written by American authors, following the English model that assumes the seduction will destroy the seduced girl - and people ate it up even though it was at odds with the lived reality in America, or at least in New England. Was it even the reality in England? Perhaps just among the gentry?
It occurs to me that these novels may in fact have made the plight of the seduced girl worse, by making everyone expect that her plight would be wretched and therefore making that fate harder to escape.
I’ve already begun research for my next essay about female literary friendship (this time: Annie Fellows Johnston, writer of the Little Colonel books, and her Louisville writing group), which means that I’ve dived into George Madden Martin’s children’s book Emmy Lou: Her Book and Heart, first published in 1902. (George Madden Martin was a penname for a woman whose given name may have been Georgia May, but the internet is not quite clear about this.
Naturally what I’d really like is a book with a dedication like “To my writing group! You guys are great!” (only more Edwardian and flowery). This is not that book, but I’m enjoying (in a horrified way) this tale of Emmy Lou’s school days: she’s in a class of seventy and they spend their days droning through the primer in unison, mat, cat, bat, etc.
Oh! And Odysseus just slaughtered the suitors and also the maids who slept with them (which seems kind of hard on the maids, I mean you slept with Calypso for seven years, Odysseus), and it was way more violent than Wishbone led me to expect. And now he’s all “People are going to be mad about how I slaughtered all the suitors” and it’s like… well, if even the people in your own culture don’t approve, why did you do it, Odysseus? Why not just kick them out of the house and demand they send you herds of cattle to replenish your stock and maybe raid them if they don’t comply?
What I Plan to Read Next
Now that I’ve listened to both the Iliad and the Odyssey, I’m contemplating whether I should give the Aeneid a go too… although I did lose some enthusiasm for this plan when I realized that Dan Stevens hasn’t read it for audiobook. Still, it might be worth doing? There’s an audiobook read by Simon Callow.
(I realized only as I was looking up Simon Callow that for years I have conflated him and Simon Cowell. Sorry, Simon Callow! You’ve probably never berated a reality TV contestant in your life.)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-23 02:40 pm (UTC)If you read old letters and diaries, you'll discover that it was more common than not. Occasionally a family did expel a daughter (never a son) and it became a cause celebre, in which case many girls moved elsewhere, put a ring on their fingers, a black dress on, and claimed to be a war widow, complete with new name.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-23 05:21 pm (UTC)There are many things you can say about Blyton but she definitely had a shameless road into the child's id. :-D
even though it was at odds with the lived reality in America, or at least in New England. Was it even the reality in England? Perhaps just among the gentry?
I don't know about the US, but in the UK it was particularly the gentry (where marriages were far more formal and about contracts, and the rise of evangelicalism was more prominent), but things shifted quite a lot across the period 1780-1840, too. A London tradesman writing his autobiog in the 1840s spoke of the changing mores and how it was absolutely fine for 'respectable' young men and women to hang out alone together (and end up having sex) in the 1780s whereas 'now' (in the 1840s) it would be seen as shocking - so the middle class morality was sliding down the social scale to the upper working class, especially as the century progressed and the illegitimacy rates fell again. (They were low pre-1750 and rose 1750-1850, and then fell again, generally). But there was a tendency, even to the end of the century for it still to be common among the working class, especially the poorest section. Engagements were regarded as being as binding as marriages (in previous centuries, agreeing to marry each other had constitued marriage, with or without the church) and you had to wait a long time to save up to afford your own accommodation and many people didn't wait, hence illegitimate children. They usually married before or after the baby came, and also sometimes because the guy didn't honour the engagement, leaving the woman holding the baby and making a bastardy order against him. Sometimes the guy might be forced to marry the woman to save the parish paying for it. Single women pregnant without a father to hand could also, under the Settlement Law, get passed about from parish to parish as no one wanted to pick up the bill. So, it was not uncommon, but there would also be potentially a lot of stigma if the father wasn't around.
But it was understood that men deserted young women sometimes (or died, or got sent to prison/transported) and they'd still marry someone else in a few years' time. Plus, marriage ceremonies cost money, so people might just live together for a bit (common law marriage), and only marry after the baby came or a minister nagged them.) (Being promiscuous, though, for a woman, was not okay, although, of course, some of them were. In parish records, generally a women has a baby out of wedlock and then marries the father soon after (or shortly before) or has an illegitimate child, then a few years later marries someone else - women having a whole string of illegitimate children over a long period was far more uncommon, and even then, usually meant a common law marriage rather than someone casually sleeping around, probably where one or both were still legally married to someone else that they couldn't afford to divorce. (Divorce didn't start to become a reality for the lower class until much later than in the US.) It doesn't mean there wasn't stigma, though - every illegitimate entry in the parish records is usually listed as 'illegitimate/base child of...' and children were prejudiced against and bullied for it back as far as we have records. So, it's really mixed - we have the statistics and the parish records, but what the communities actually felt about it is often harder to get at. Generally, there was a moral shift across the sort of 'Austen' period.
I realized only as I was looking up Simon Callow that for years I have conflated him and Simon Cowell. Sorry, Simon Callow! You’ve probably never berated a reality TV contestant in your life.
Poor Simon Callow! He's a pretty good actor and performer, so I should imagine he'd be an excellent audio book person, although not in the same way as Dan Stevens.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 09:57 pm (UTC)I was wondering if that was of a piece with the general Mormon innovations about marriage, so it's interesting to hear that similar situations arose among non-Mormons in England - the common-law marriage when one or both partners have a previous marriage still on the books but moribund in actual fact.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-25 09:28 am (UTC)I think for it to be accepted by the community there would have to be reason to do it (e.g. your spouse had already left you, or was drunk/incapable/abusive) - if not, you might instead find yourself the victim of a community 'skimmington' which seems to have happened to stop or punish abusive husbands, and spouses who just went off with somebody new (especially if there were children, they also took money/items, or left the other spouse unable to support themselves). So, there was definitely some ground level community disapproval of certain kinds of behaviour in that respect, too.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-23 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 12:59 pm (UTC)Have you read Emily Wilson's twitter thread about the killing of the suitors and maids? She has some thoughts about whether it was justified. https://twitter.com/EmilyRCWilson/status/1018900979226472448
no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 10:12 pm (UTC)Of course, no one was marching on Odysseus in outrage over the slaughter of the maids (or the goatherd Melanthius, for that matter) but that reflects the fact that none of them care much about someone else's slaves as much as anything.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 08:44 pm (UTC)Also I have really fond memories of The Secret Island (and I think one of its sequels), though I haven't read it in years.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 10:38 pm (UTC)