four children escape an untenable home situation to create for themselves a delightful home in the wilderness.
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.
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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.