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 Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 2:38 pm
Have an interesting quote you would like to share from a Victorian source (book, poem, &c.)? Put it here!
Izumi was just going through some books and found some neat ones.. Here is a nursery rhyme about the morality of doing the laundry:
They that wash on Monday
Have all week to dry.
They that wash on Tuesday
Are not so much awry.
They that wash on Wednesday
Are not so much to blame.
They that wash on Thursday
Wash for very shame.
They that wash on Friday
Wash in sorry need.
They that wash on Saturday
Are lazy sluts indeed.
(Chapter 4: The Scullery, p. 159 of Inside The Victorian Home by Judith Flanders)
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Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 5:21 pm
Chapter 2, The Nursery p.94 of Inside The Victorian Home on the subject of education being harmful to a girls' helth Quote: A boy has been riding, and boating, and playing cricket, and both body and mind have been roused to energy; and so, when he comes to study, he has a sense of power, which acts mentally as well as physically, and enables him to grasp difficulties, and master them. The girl, on the contrary, has been guarded from over fatigue, subject to restrictions with regard to cold and heat, and hours of study, seldom trusted away from home, allowed only a small share of responsibility; - not willingly, with any wish to thwart her inclinations - but simply because, if she is not thus guarded, if she is allowed to run risks, which, to the boy, are a matter of indifference, she will probably develop some disease, which, if not fatal, will, at any rate, be an injury to her for life. P.95 "Ignorance was, in many ways, a desirable state" Quote: Monica, a woman who had been forced to marry for economic security, disagreed with her husband on weather or not a mutual friend was "nice" for her to know. He responded: "... In your ignorance of the world"- "Which you think very proper in a woman," she interrupted caustically. "Yes, I do! That kind of knowledge is harmful to a woman." "Then, please, how should she judge her acquaintances?" "A married woman must accept her husband's opinion, at all events about men." He plunged on into the ancient quagmire. "A man may know with impunity what is injurious if it enters a woman's mind." p.96 Quote: Knowledge of a fact could corrupt, not because of the fact itself, but because of the gender of the mind it resided in. Quote: Girls were only to respond to others, not to have thoughts of their own.
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Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 5:40 pm
Chapter 3, The kitchen p.126 of Inside the Victorian Home on the subject of buying food pre-made Quote: Bread was known to be filthy. A Parliamentary report in 1862 had suggested that "the principal fact" about bakeries was there extreme dirt, and in many places the almost total covering of the entire space between the rafters with massive cobwebs, weighed down with the flour dust that had accumulated upon them, and hanging in strips just above your head. A heavy tread or blow upon the floor above, brought down large fragments of them, as I witnessed on more than one occasion; and as the rafters immediately over the troughs in which the dough is made are as thickly hung with them as any other part of the bakehouse, masses of these cobwebs must be frequently falling into the dough... Animals in considerable numbers crawled in and out of and upon the troughs where the bread was made, and upon the adjoining walls. And then there were the smells: "The air of those small bakehouses is generally overloaded with foul gases from the drains, from the ovens, and from the fermentation of the bread, and with emanations from [the bakers'] own bodies"
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