Hiatus
I haven't posted in a while, despite my best intentions; I will now take the time to say I won't (probably) post for a good while longer. The PhD has just gotten a bit too hairy, among other things, and I don't have the time (or eyepower) to deal with a blog for now. But once I get over this bit, I'll be back!
"Le Gay Paree", we are not
So, the Tour de France came through York this past weekend, the second of three English stages this time around (of which two in Yorkshire). And because I'm sorry that I've been delayed in posting (travelling, among other things, to Aberdeen for a French conference--what?), that's what we're going to talk about for lack of more substantive material!
You see, York got really into this, especially once England wasn't in the World Cup any more. Bunting everywhere. Yellow bikes everywhere. And more strangely, French flags everywhere. OK, I get it--but what I found really funny was the following attempt to "Frenchify" one of our local streets, St. Leonard's Place, thusly:
Yep, that's a copy of a Parisian street sign (which I will readily admit are a lot classier than the British black-and-white, let alone the American). Not that the entirety of the Tour takes place in Paris, either, but ok, whatever. What's hilarious here is the precise execution.
Firstly, "boulevard"? What? Actually this street might be as close as we get in York (it's actually as close as we get to London, really, never mind that the building so decorated is abandoned), but this street just ain't it. It curves, for a start, and that's exactly what the boulevards were not meant to do when Paris was being reinvented in the nineteenth century. Also, it's like maybe 200 yards long, tops. One hundred? Not to mention that "place" would be entirely legit French--heck, that's where we borrowed it from. But hey, whatever.
Weirder: Second arrondissement? This makes sense in Paris, and I suppose you have to find something to fill in the little circle-y bit, but we don't have those here. Why second? If anything, since the street is in the formerly-Roman-fortress bit of York, it should be the first arrondissement (the civilian town across the river was clearly second-rate at the time). My best guess is that it's because we're the second stage on the Tour? Otherwise, someone must have got out the random number generator, or maybe just really liked that bit of Paris a lot. I don't know.
Finally, my favorite things about Parisian street signs are that they teach you a bit about history. Take, for example, the following (entirely coincidentally from the actual deuxième arrondissement):
Whenever a street is named after a person (as well as events, perhaps places, etc.), the sign itself tells you more. Marcel, we can see, was prévôt des marchands in the fourteenth century--although this only hints at his role in the uprising of the capital in 1358-9 (seriously, look it up, it's crazy stuff). You get to know a starting-point, get to place them in time, ground yourself in history. So cool.
Which brings us back to the "Boulevard St Leonard". 1944-2014? This is not what those numbers do.
A quick search reveals what I had immediately suspected--St. Leonard did not, in fact, die just this year! (For the record, the fact that the medieval hospice of St. Leonard is just around the corner is a good clue). In fact, he was a 6th-century saint from France. "m. v 559" would be appropriate text for the sign in York. But instead, we get the end of WWII, and today. Did they even know what the numbers usually mean?
Now, I think they were trying to do some sort of commemoration (strangely competing with the WWI centenary there), because there was a giant old airplane parked on top of the theatre across the street--which was admittedly kinda neat. And I believe that Yorkshire soldiers were, like soldiers from many other places in Britain, involved in the liberation of France. But that's got nothing whatsoever to do with this street, and sticking these dates on the sign like that is just... confusing, actually. It makes it seem like this street somehow mattered in WWII, and has stuck around since then? I just don't get it.
And actually, as a French saint, St. Leonard's got some cool cross-Channel connections to be pointed out too.
At any rate, the cyclists have gone now, and I'm sure the signs will be going soon too (the plane has left, for instance). Then I can stop being slightly weirded out by the whole thing.
You see, York got really into this, especially once England wasn't in the World Cup any more. Bunting everywhere. Yellow bikes everywhere. And more strangely, French flags everywhere. OK, I get it--but what I found really funny was the following attempt to "Frenchify" one of our local streets, St. Leonard's Place, thusly:
Yep, that's a copy of a Parisian street sign (which I will readily admit are a lot classier than the British black-and-white, let alone the American). Not that the entirety of the Tour takes place in Paris, either, but ok, whatever. What's hilarious here is the precise execution.
Firstly, "boulevard"? What? Actually this street might be as close as we get in York (it's actually as close as we get to London, really, never mind that the building so decorated is abandoned), but this street just ain't it. It curves, for a start, and that's exactly what the boulevards were not meant to do when Paris was being reinvented in the nineteenth century. Also, it's like maybe 200 yards long, tops. One hundred? Not to mention that "place" would be entirely legit French--heck, that's where we borrowed it from. But hey, whatever.
Weirder: Second arrondissement? This makes sense in Paris, and I suppose you have to find something to fill in the little circle-y bit, but we don't have those here. Why second? If anything, since the street is in the formerly-Roman-fortress bit of York, it should be the first arrondissement (the civilian town across the river was clearly second-rate at the time). My best guess is that it's because we're the second stage on the Tour? Otherwise, someone must have got out the random number generator, or maybe just really liked that bit of Paris a lot. I don't know.
Finally, my favorite things about Parisian street signs are that they teach you a bit about history. Take, for example, the following (entirely coincidentally from the actual deuxième arrondissement):
Whenever a street is named after a person (as well as events, perhaps places, etc.), the sign itself tells you more. Marcel, we can see, was prévôt des marchands in the fourteenth century--although this only hints at his role in the uprising of the capital in 1358-9 (seriously, look it up, it's crazy stuff). You get to know a starting-point, get to place them in time, ground yourself in history. So cool.
Which brings us back to the "Boulevard St Leonard". 1944-2014? This is not what those numbers do.
A quick search reveals what I had immediately suspected--St. Leonard did not, in fact, die just this year! (For the record, the fact that the medieval hospice of St. Leonard is just around the corner is a good clue). In fact, he was a 6th-century saint from France. "m. v 559" would be appropriate text for the sign in York. But instead, we get the end of WWII, and today. Did they even know what the numbers usually mean?
Now, I think they were trying to do some sort of commemoration (strangely competing with the WWI centenary there), because there was a giant old airplane parked on top of the theatre across the street--which was admittedly kinda neat. And I believe that Yorkshire soldiers were, like soldiers from many other places in Britain, involved in the liberation of France. But that's got nothing whatsoever to do with this street, and sticking these dates on the sign like that is just... confusing, actually. It makes it seem like this street somehow mattered in WWII, and has stuck around since then? I just don't get it.
And actually, as a French saint, St. Leonard's got some cool cross-Channel connections to be pointed out too.
At any rate, the cyclists have gone now, and I'm sure the signs will be going soon too (the plane has left, for instance). Then I can stop being slightly weirded out by the whole thing.
Who's Who in Medieval Brittany
I know this is perhaps is not as pressing to some people as it is to me, but if you have ever wanted to get a good look at the dukes of Brittany of the Middle Ages, you might have discovered that no good tree exists--at least not in a single, easy-to-find format. So, since I spent an inordinate amount of time the other day finally making one, I thought I would put it up here in the vague hopes that it might be useful to some desperate searcher on the internet some day. Not guaranteed 100% complete, but a good start. (Click on the picture for a fuller version, and if you want to use this image please give credit).
Life in the Galleries: Getting Around
So, many weird things happen in museums. Visitors are most of them. I do intend to come up with a "please never do this" list at some point, but meanwhile I just want to address some of the strange conversations I (or, by report, other guides) have had over the years with regards to different difficulties apparently faced for no particular reason, and other general weirdnesses.
Let's start with the basics: navigating the museum. I should specify that all the museums I have ever worked in have been one-way routes.
Visitor, having come into gallery: Which way do we start?
Guide, confused: ...Um
Visitor: Or don't you know?
Guide: No, it just doesn't matter.
***
Visitor, coming up to guide on gallery: Excuse me, how do we get in?
Guide, confused: ...to where?
Visitor: To the exhibit.
Guide: Um... where did you come in?
Visitor: Over there. ~points to entrance~ How do we get to the exhibit?
Guide: This is the exhibit.
Visitor: Yes, but how do we get in?
***
Visitor, walking into gallery: Where do we start?
Guide: Well, I'd suggest looking at the objects.
***
Visitor, in room with single exit: How do we carry on from here?
Guide: would like to say By walking, but instead contents self with pointing to the door
***
Visitor, to friend: How do we get out of here? ~heads straight for large fire door covered with signs saying "alarmed door" in several languages~
There are clearly all kinds of problem going on here, not to mention the number of people who manage to go around backwards through an entire museum without apparently ever noticing that nothing's in order. Fine. Not really my problem; we've done what we can. But these are really tricky questions to answer sometimes, as a guide, so if it takes us a moment to answer, it's not because we don't know the layout of our own museum* but because we're trying to figure out what information we can possibly provide that you don't already have.
*Thanks, by the way, for making that assumption, visitor.
Let's start with the basics: navigating the museum. I should specify that all the museums I have ever worked in have been one-way routes.
Visitor, having come into gallery: Which way do we start?
Guide, confused: ...Um
Visitor: Or don't you know?
Guide: No, it just doesn't matter.
***
Visitor, coming up to guide on gallery: Excuse me, how do we get in?
Guide, confused: ...to where?
Visitor: To the exhibit.
Guide: Um... where did you come in?
Visitor: Over there. ~points to entrance~ How do we get to the exhibit?
Guide: This is the exhibit.
Visitor: Yes, but how do we get in?
***
Visitor, walking into gallery: Where do we start?
Guide: Well, I'd suggest looking at the objects.
***
Visitor, in room with single exit: How do we carry on from here?
Guide: would like to say By walking, but instead contents self with pointing to the door
***
Visitor, to friend: How do we get out of here? ~heads straight for large fire door covered with signs saying "alarmed door" in several languages~
There are clearly all kinds of problem going on here, not to mention the number of people who manage to go around backwards through an entire museum without apparently ever noticing that nothing's in order. Fine. Not really my problem; we've done what we can. But these are really tricky questions to answer sometimes, as a guide, so if it takes us a moment to answer, it's not because we don't know the layout of our own museum* but because we're trying to figure out what information we can possibly provide that you don't already have.
*Thanks, by the way, for making that assumption, visitor.
Im in ur stories, arranging ur marriages
Sorry for the title, I just couldn't resist.
So what I want to talk about, in the broadest possible terms is the idea of rebellion and cultural realism. But what I'm looking at, in specific, is a common trope of fantasy stories (in a variety of media): the arranged marriage.
This is often used as a starting-point for stories in which a girl features as a main character. There are exceptions, but mostly the "arranged marriage" is a female story, as if the boy isn't being equally arranged in many cases (though not all--see below). This can happen as background: the male protagonist meets the female, and she's already engaged (disaster! drama! heartbreak!), and either she already hates her husband-to-be (because he's ugly/horrible/already unfaithful, or what have you), or she has no particular feelings but will now fall in love with the male protagonist*, thereby forcing her to make a choice between Duty and Love. What fun!
I find arranged marriages historically interesting, since they were much more common in Western Europe in previous centuries (not to say that parental approval can't still cause problems), especially higher up the social scale.** I am spending at least 3 years of my life studying a woman who had one of these, and I'm fascinated by how a decidedly odd couple (no, seriously, you can read about the hairshirts) formed a really solid working partnership. That's far more interesting a process than just falling in love--at least for study.
But because of dominant cultural mores in Western society today, this practical and entirely workable side has, narratively, given way to a much more negative, and hence unsubtle, view of arranged marriages. And it's SO BORING. If the arranged marriage isn't background, as I defined it above, it's a plot point, a means for the girl to push against her society and show how feisty she is. The example that's lately bothered me most is the animated movie Brave. It's a story entirely about rebelling, though also coming to terms with family who might think differently than you. Watch it if you want more detail. The bit that concerns us is the archery contest of marriage: Merida's got to marry one of the sons of local leaders, whichever wins the local sporting event. She announces her eligibility to compete, however, and kicks their butts, thereby claiming her own hand and causing lots of disgruntlement.***
There are some cool elements here. There's a long trope of women being unwilling to marry anyone who can't beat them at athletics (Brunhilde, Atalanta...), which is given a new form here. OK, that's mostly the cool element. Unfortunately, this then gets caked on with a bunch of obnoxious, jarringly-anachronistic, and unnecessary elements which are common to the Arranged Marriage narrative today.
1. None of the suitors look like guys you'd actually want to end up with. Gormless, gross, unhandsome... I'm not actually saying that it's fair to say that such men aren't worthy of wives--appearances aren't everything--but that's definitely how they're being "sold" here. This is lazy writing. If you want to make a more meaningful story, have the guys have their own qualities. Don't just make them bumbling idiots or whatever. The point is that a guy can be lovely and wonderful and you are STILL allowed not to want to have your marriage arranged to him. Plus, I just can't stand Disney bumblers.
2. However, it is not actually clear why Merida is so bowled over by the whole incident. And here's where we come to the anachronism (still, see caveats below). She is pretty much astounded that she would have to get married, and to some random guy. If that's how it's DONE around there, thought, she really should have heard about it. This should not come as a shock. More specifically, the whole 'it's not fair', 'it's not me', 'it's not whatever' whining actually makes no sense. Cultural norms--remember, we're talking about a time when that would have been absolutely normal, and moreover without other customs against which to compare (which is what's causing a lot of the shakeups in traditional societies about this today, though one shouldn't underestimate those roots)--shape worldviews. It's not about fairness, that's just how things are. "You" as the all-important individual, is likewise a fairly modern theme; Merida's mom tries to convince her of Duty etc., representing the "older" viewpoint, but to be frank she shouldn't have to. Merida shouldn't be thinking in those terms.
3. So, if you're going to rebel, do it in keeping with your setting, not with modern norms. This is not to say that you can't have a rebellious character, but you should avoid the modern teenage strop.
I was going to try and explain alternatives for Merida to flesh out that point, but upon reflection I think it would instead be best to hasten along to examples of Arranged Marriage stories that illustrate it for me. There are 3 works that, in different ways, use Arranged Marriages interestingly, accurately, and solve a lot of the problems with the usual narrative above. Beware spoilers, I guess, if you ever intend to read/watch these. I'll do my best.
1. A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin: Khal Drogo and Daenerys.
Firstly I have to say that I'm using the books here, since I haven't watched the show, and that's critical for this scene: in case you didn't know, Martin did NOT write this as a rape. There is no raping. There is instead a powerful and important scene which we'll come to in a moment.
So, Daeny's wedding was arranged by her brother for money. It freaks her out a bit, but she remembers her cultural norms (that sounded less obnoxious in my head--carry on) and doesn't ruin the arrangements. At this point, she is both scared of her brother and generally fairly passive in personality; fine.
Then, on her wedding night, her husband is solicitous for her fears, and asks her permission before they have sex.**** Given the opportunity to refuse... she says "yes". She takes on the role which was arranged for her, determined to make of it what she can and to do her part well.
And she turns into a baddass, dragon-wielding, hardcore queen of awesome (and the only thing I still like in these books*****).
Her assigned role is an opportunity for transformation. Through it, she can take the system and use it, making the rules her rules. That's all the feistiness you need, right there. And it's really, really believable. I don't feel like she comes from another (modern) society and was just plonked in place to have conniptions about something that just wouldn't have been seen as bad, if properly done. Nor is she effacing her own personality, her "me"-ness (if that's what you're looking for) by doing something which she initially doesn't want to. Instead, she takes control. Heck yes.
2. Elantris, Sanderson: Sarene and Raoden.
Firstly, I did enjoy this book. Secondly, it is absolutely rife with horrifyingly modern outlooks used without particular subtlety, and with historical anachronism romping gaily through. (Though it may seem strange to talk about historical anachronism in a made-up world, it's all about context: having a few characters running around bandying scientific terminology, modern social ideas, and current slang while there's no apparent reason for them to do so in a world that has no grounding for it, is a problem. I could flip it around and ask "why are fantasy characters thinking the way we do now?"--it's really not believable, without giving a good reason. But that's for another post. Back to marriages!)
But he's done something interesting with the Arranged Marriage. The foreign princess Sarene is engaged to Prince Raoden, a political match apparently arranged. But over the course of the story, it is revealed that it was actually Sarene's idea, and that they had also corresponded and found themselves at least somewhat attracted to each other, intellectually/emotionally. So this manages to get all the excitement of a political marriage--the trepidation, the dislocation into a new family, the unknown spouse--while slowly inverting it, giving agency to the participants and making compatibility and teamwork the main foci.
So, in fact, in some ways this is not technically Arranged, but it also is: and it could have actually been arranged, without really altering the story. Agency can be acquired through accepting, so even if Sarene's father had scrounged up her partner, taking this on--like Daeny--gives her a strong personal role. The focus on teamwork is, to me, critical and extremely important historically. Elite couples have jobs, things to get done: and both partners need to contribute to get that job done. It's about working together; love may happen on the way. That's fascinating. Then both of them can rebel against society together! (And it is very much a social rebellion story. That's where the anachronism is most blatant--why would you even use the phrase "feudal system'???****** But it's not because of the marriage).
Also, Sanderson does a good job of showing the male perspective on the marriage, too; he shares similar emotions to his bride-to-be, curiosity and anxiety and so on. And that's only fair, otherwise you're assuming that men are pretty much happy to bang anything; or alternatively, making too much of the fact that men were more socially free to sleep around if the wife doesn't do it for them, as opposed to recognizing the impact of the wife on the husband's household and affairs. Give the man a voice, here!
3. Mulan, Disney film.
This is far and away my favorite Disney film (better, it's based on a historical character!). Mulan is fantastic as a character, in pretty much every way. Here, what we care about though is the opening, where she has to go to the matchmaker's to show how suitable she is, and goofs it up massively. Then she's quite upset about it, and has a "who I am" song.
The "I'm trying to be someone I'm not" is typical Disney fare, but it works out much better here than in Brave. Firstly, Mulan genuinely tries: she thinks like the people around her, wants to do well within the social rules, and is disappointed when, to the judgement of people around her, she is a failure. That's such a real sentiment, and deserves time along with the desire to rebel.
Of course, then she dons armor and goes and makes her own path. But what I love here is that that path is still in the idea of duty: she's saving her family, saving her land, lives the ordered life of a soldier... It's actually only when she's told to go home before Saving The Day that she actually directly pushes back, saying "no" and sticking around to do her thing.
And that's a gorgeous comparison with the matchmaker. Mulan values society, and she'll do what she can to improve it and play her role in it--whether that's trying to get married or, ultimately, being a warrior. In fact, much of the grousing in her Me song is how she's disappointed others:
Look at me
I will never pass for a perfect bride
Or a perfect daughter
Can it be
I'm not meant to play this part?
Now I see
That if I were truly to be myself
I would break my fam'ly's heart...
There's actually a lot going on here, and I don't want to downplay it. The "be myself" thing, as discussed, is modern intrusion, which is my main problem with this song: but Mulan is also recognizing that she will always BE part of her society--we can't escape this--and she's dissatisfied with her inability to contribute. I think it's so important to recognize that this is in no way incompatible with a rebellious personality. Mulan is willing to make her own rules (or rather, swap the "female" rules for the "male" ones, then redefine both at the end. SO PROGRESSIVE for Disney, especially back then), but she also a) understands society's rules, of which Merida seems woefully ignorant, and b) wants to make her own needs and those rules mutually compatible. Damn, that's an intense story. And so I have sympathy for Mulan, who's facing a very complex dilemma, while Merida's just a little too spoiled. Her movie forces her to temper herself eventually, but the plot is basically driven by her obnoxiousness, and that's unfortunate.
*
From the length of this post, you might be able to guess that I care a lot about this topic. I don't want to run on more, but I feel that some caveats are in order.
Firstly, I am talking strictly about NARRATIVES here, not real life. I don't want to all-and-out condemn the practice of arranging marriages, because to say they're only bad is rude to those couples for whom they've worked out; but it's important to acknowledge the harmful relationships that can also result. That having been said, can we please stop telling the same story? There's so much nuance to explore!
Secondly, I'm not saying that you should do what society tells you just because that's how most people might play it. Remember, stories, not real life! But if you're telling a story, you have a responsibility to make your characters ring true. Don't have them behave a certain way because that's what we do now. I know, I know, audience relatability yadda yadda, but honestly, I don't care. Challenge people. And more specifically, give them some credit and teach them how to consider viewpoints aside from their own.
I say this as someone who is definitely a geek and in many things--media tastes, clothing, pastimes, friends--has never been particularly bothered by what other people have to say about it. However, I do tend to like to get along with people, as I hope most of you do; we'll naturally tend to retain as many social rules as possible while playing with those that matter less and that more suit our tastes. If you don't, you start getting labelled "crazy", which most characters getting Arranged Marriages aren't supposed to be. And more specifically, everyone's rebellion, no matter how extreme, stems from those same social rules. The conscious rejection will have its own set of rules--that's how you get subcultures--to modify the main batch. You can't just import completely alien (or anachronistic) mentalities, chalk it up to personality, and call it a day. And an arranged match should never be a surprise.
So I guess the takeaway here is that the Arranged Marriage is not something I inherently hate. I just hate it as the field for social rebellion. Firstly, once or twice might have been ok, but it's such a hackneyed trope now that it absolutely needs to go. Secondly, "feisty rebellion" apparently tends to mean "unbelievable norms". If you want to show a rebellious teenager like Merida, why not have her dealing with something that more teenagers in the target audience will actually confront? The dominance of the Importance of the Individual in modern culture does not mean that stories set elsewhere/when should be using it to show how Strong and Independent a (female) character is. You don't have to blend a historical problem with a modern mindset. And if you do want an Arranged Marriage--and/or a Strong Female--there are plenty of stories doing it far better, far more interestingly, and far more convincingly. Do you want to argue with Daenerys about that?
*Which I want to abbreviate as MP, but living in Britain as I do, I want to make sure no one thinks I'm talking about politicians... Ugh.
**The less important you were, the less your choice mattered, and it was quite easy to just go ahead and get married without anyone the wiser (at first). Remember, marriage only became "defined" (in a religious sense) at Lateran IV in 1215!
***That is one word we can use.
****Khal Drogo is a surprisingly good role model.
*****Yes, this is a rare opportunity to hear me praise Martin's writings. Basically, the first book was good and it's been a steady downhill. Enjoy it while you can!
******For those unaware, the feudal "system" never existed except for in the minds of post-medieval lawyers, and no one at the time would have EVER used the idea of a "system" to describe their own socio-governmental structure. They discussed political ideas like monarchy, but in entirely different terms, and that matters.
So what I want to talk about, in the broadest possible terms is the idea of rebellion and cultural realism. But what I'm looking at, in specific, is a common trope of fantasy stories (in a variety of media): the arranged marriage.
This is often used as a starting-point for stories in which a girl features as a main character. There are exceptions, but mostly the "arranged marriage" is a female story, as if the boy isn't being equally arranged in many cases (though not all--see below). This can happen as background: the male protagonist meets the female, and she's already engaged (disaster! drama! heartbreak!), and either she already hates her husband-to-be (because he's ugly/horrible/already unfaithful, or what have you), or she has no particular feelings but will now fall in love with the male protagonist*, thereby forcing her to make a choice between Duty and Love. What fun!
I find arranged marriages historically interesting, since they were much more common in Western Europe in previous centuries (not to say that parental approval can't still cause problems), especially higher up the social scale.** I am spending at least 3 years of my life studying a woman who had one of these, and I'm fascinated by how a decidedly odd couple (no, seriously, you can read about the hairshirts) formed a really solid working partnership. That's far more interesting a process than just falling in love--at least for study.
But because of dominant cultural mores in Western society today, this practical and entirely workable side has, narratively, given way to a much more negative, and hence unsubtle, view of arranged marriages. And it's SO BORING. If the arranged marriage isn't background, as I defined it above, it's a plot point, a means for the girl to push against her society and show how feisty she is. The example that's lately bothered me most is the animated movie Brave. It's a story entirely about rebelling, though also coming to terms with family who might think differently than you. Watch it if you want more detail. The bit that concerns us is the archery contest of marriage: Merida's got to marry one of the sons of local leaders, whichever wins the local sporting event. She announces her eligibility to compete, however, and kicks their butts, thereby claiming her own hand and causing lots of disgruntlement.***
There are some cool elements here. There's a long trope of women being unwilling to marry anyone who can't beat them at athletics (Brunhilde, Atalanta...), which is given a new form here. OK, that's mostly the cool element. Unfortunately, this then gets caked on with a bunch of obnoxious, jarringly-anachronistic, and unnecessary elements which are common to the Arranged Marriage narrative today.
1. None of the suitors look like guys you'd actually want to end up with. Gormless, gross, unhandsome... I'm not actually saying that it's fair to say that such men aren't worthy of wives--appearances aren't everything--but that's definitely how they're being "sold" here. This is lazy writing. If you want to make a more meaningful story, have the guys have their own qualities. Don't just make them bumbling idiots or whatever. The point is that a guy can be lovely and wonderful and you are STILL allowed not to want to have your marriage arranged to him. Plus, I just can't stand Disney bumblers.
2. However, it is not actually clear why Merida is so bowled over by the whole incident. And here's where we come to the anachronism (still, see caveats below). She is pretty much astounded that she would have to get married, and to some random guy. If that's how it's DONE around there, thought, she really should have heard about it. This should not come as a shock. More specifically, the whole 'it's not fair', 'it's not me', 'it's not whatever' whining actually makes no sense. Cultural norms--remember, we're talking about a time when that would have been absolutely normal, and moreover without other customs against which to compare (which is what's causing a lot of the shakeups in traditional societies about this today, though one shouldn't underestimate those roots)--shape worldviews. It's not about fairness, that's just how things are. "You" as the all-important individual, is likewise a fairly modern theme; Merida's mom tries to convince her of Duty etc., representing the "older" viewpoint, but to be frank she shouldn't have to. Merida shouldn't be thinking in those terms.
3. So, if you're going to rebel, do it in keeping with your setting, not with modern norms. This is not to say that you can't have a rebellious character, but you should avoid the modern teenage strop.
I was going to try and explain alternatives for Merida to flesh out that point, but upon reflection I think it would instead be best to hasten along to examples of Arranged Marriage stories that illustrate it for me. There are 3 works that, in different ways, use Arranged Marriages interestingly, accurately, and solve a lot of the problems with the usual narrative above. Beware spoilers, I guess, if you ever intend to read/watch these. I'll do my best.
1. A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin: Khal Drogo and Daenerys.
Firstly I have to say that I'm using the books here, since I haven't watched the show, and that's critical for this scene: in case you didn't know, Martin did NOT write this as a rape. There is no raping. There is instead a powerful and important scene which we'll come to in a moment.
So, Daeny's wedding was arranged by her brother for money. It freaks her out a bit, but she remembers her cultural norms (that sounded less obnoxious in my head--carry on) and doesn't ruin the arrangements. At this point, she is both scared of her brother and generally fairly passive in personality; fine.
Then, on her wedding night, her husband is solicitous for her fears, and asks her permission before they have sex.**** Given the opportunity to refuse... she says "yes". She takes on the role which was arranged for her, determined to make of it what she can and to do her part well.
And she turns into a baddass, dragon-wielding, hardcore queen of awesome (and the only thing I still like in these books*****).
Her assigned role is an opportunity for transformation. Through it, she can take the system and use it, making the rules her rules. That's all the feistiness you need, right there. And it's really, really believable. I don't feel like she comes from another (modern) society and was just plonked in place to have conniptions about something that just wouldn't have been seen as bad, if properly done. Nor is she effacing her own personality, her "me"-ness (if that's what you're looking for) by doing something which she initially doesn't want to. Instead, she takes control. Heck yes.
2. Elantris, Sanderson: Sarene and Raoden.
Firstly, I did enjoy this book. Secondly, it is absolutely rife with horrifyingly modern outlooks used without particular subtlety, and with historical anachronism romping gaily through. (Though it may seem strange to talk about historical anachronism in a made-up world, it's all about context: having a few characters running around bandying scientific terminology, modern social ideas, and current slang while there's no apparent reason for them to do so in a world that has no grounding for it, is a problem. I could flip it around and ask "why are fantasy characters thinking the way we do now?"--it's really not believable, without giving a good reason. But that's for another post. Back to marriages!)
But he's done something interesting with the Arranged Marriage. The foreign princess Sarene is engaged to Prince Raoden, a political match apparently arranged. But over the course of the story, it is revealed that it was actually Sarene's idea, and that they had also corresponded and found themselves at least somewhat attracted to each other, intellectually/emotionally. So this manages to get all the excitement of a political marriage--the trepidation, the dislocation into a new family, the unknown spouse--while slowly inverting it, giving agency to the participants and making compatibility and teamwork the main foci.
So, in fact, in some ways this is not technically Arranged, but it also is: and it could have actually been arranged, without really altering the story. Agency can be acquired through accepting, so even if Sarene's father had scrounged up her partner, taking this on--like Daeny--gives her a strong personal role. The focus on teamwork is, to me, critical and extremely important historically. Elite couples have jobs, things to get done: and both partners need to contribute to get that job done. It's about working together; love may happen on the way. That's fascinating. Then both of them can rebel against society together! (And it is very much a social rebellion story. That's where the anachronism is most blatant--why would you even use the phrase "feudal system'???****** But it's not because of the marriage).
Also, Sanderson does a good job of showing the male perspective on the marriage, too; he shares similar emotions to his bride-to-be, curiosity and anxiety and so on. And that's only fair, otherwise you're assuming that men are pretty much happy to bang anything; or alternatively, making too much of the fact that men were more socially free to sleep around if the wife doesn't do it for them, as opposed to recognizing the impact of the wife on the husband's household and affairs. Give the man a voice, here!
3. Mulan, Disney film.
This is far and away my favorite Disney film (better, it's based on a historical character!). Mulan is fantastic as a character, in pretty much every way. Here, what we care about though is the opening, where she has to go to the matchmaker's to show how suitable she is, and goofs it up massively. Then she's quite upset about it, and has a "who I am" song.
The "I'm trying to be someone I'm not" is typical Disney fare, but it works out much better here than in Brave. Firstly, Mulan genuinely tries: she thinks like the people around her, wants to do well within the social rules, and is disappointed when, to the judgement of people around her, she is a failure. That's such a real sentiment, and deserves time along with the desire to rebel.
Of course, then she dons armor and goes and makes her own path. But what I love here is that that path is still in the idea of duty: she's saving her family, saving her land, lives the ordered life of a soldier... It's actually only when she's told to go home before Saving The Day that she actually directly pushes back, saying "no" and sticking around to do her thing.
And that's a gorgeous comparison with the matchmaker. Mulan values society, and she'll do what she can to improve it and play her role in it--whether that's trying to get married or, ultimately, being a warrior. In fact, much of the grousing in her Me song is how she's disappointed others:
Look at me
I will never pass for a perfect bride
Or a perfect daughter
Can it be
I'm not meant to play this part?
Now I see
That if I were truly to be myself
I would break my fam'ly's heart...
There's actually a lot going on here, and I don't want to downplay it. The "be myself" thing, as discussed, is modern intrusion, which is my main problem with this song: but Mulan is also recognizing that she will always BE part of her society--we can't escape this--and she's dissatisfied with her inability to contribute. I think it's so important to recognize that this is in no way incompatible with a rebellious personality. Mulan is willing to make her own rules (or rather, swap the "female" rules for the "male" ones, then redefine both at the end. SO PROGRESSIVE for Disney, especially back then), but she also a) understands society's rules, of which Merida seems woefully ignorant, and b) wants to make her own needs and those rules mutually compatible. Damn, that's an intense story. And so I have sympathy for Mulan, who's facing a very complex dilemma, while Merida's just a little too spoiled. Her movie forces her to temper herself eventually, but the plot is basically driven by her obnoxiousness, and that's unfortunate.
*
From the length of this post, you might be able to guess that I care a lot about this topic. I don't want to run on more, but I feel that some caveats are in order.
Firstly, I am talking strictly about NARRATIVES here, not real life. I don't want to all-and-out condemn the practice of arranging marriages, because to say they're only bad is rude to those couples for whom they've worked out; but it's important to acknowledge the harmful relationships that can also result. That having been said, can we please stop telling the same story? There's so much nuance to explore!
Secondly, I'm not saying that you should do what society tells you just because that's how most people might play it. Remember, stories, not real life! But if you're telling a story, you have a responsibility to make your characters ring true. Don't have them behave a certain way because that's what we do now. I know, I know, audience relatability yadda yadda, but honestly, I don't care. Challenge people. And more specifically, give them some credit and teach them how to consider viewpoints aside from their own.
I say this as someone who is definitely a geek and in many things--media tastes, clothing, pastimes, friends--has never been particularly bothered by what other people have to say about it. However, I do tend to like to get along with people, as I hope most of you do; we'll naturally tend to retain as many social rules as possible while playing with those that matter less and that more suit our tastes. If you don't, you start getting labelled "crazy", which most characters getting Arranged Marriages aren't supposed to be. And more specifically, everyone's rebellion, no matter how extreme, stems from those same social rules. The conscious rejection will have its own set of rules--that's how you get subcultures--to modify the main batch. You can't just import completely alien (or anachronistic) mentalities, chalk it up to personality, and call it a day. And an arranged match should never be a surprise.
So I guess the takeaway here is that the Arranged Marriage is not something I inherently hate. I just hate it as the field for social rebellion. Firstly, once or twice might have been ok, but it's such a hackneyed trope now that it absolutely needs to go. Secondly, "feisty rebellion" apparently tends to mean "unbelievable norms". If you want to show a rebellious teenager like Merida, why not have her dealing with something that more teenagers in the target audience will actually confront? The dominance of the Importance of the Individual in modern culture does not mean that stories set elsewhere/when should be using it to show how Strong and Independent a (female) character is. You don't have to blend a historical problem with a modern mindset. And if you do want an Arranged Marriage--and/or a Strong Female--there are plenty of stories doing it far better, far more interestingly, and far more convincingly. Do you want to argue with Daenerys about that?
*Which I want to abbreviate as MP, but living in Britain as I do, I want to make sure no one thinks I'm talking about politicians... Ugh.
**The less important you were, the less your choice mattered, and it was quite easy to just go ahead and get married without anyone the wiser (at first). Remember, marriage only became "defined" (in a religious sense) at Lateran IV in 1215!
***That is one word we can use.
****Khal Drogo is a surprisingly good role model.
*****Yes, this is a rare opportunity to hear me praise Martin's writings. Basically, the first book was good and it's been a steady downhill. Enjoy it while you can!
******For those unaware, the feudal "system" never existed except for in the minds of post-medieval lawyers, and no one at the time would have EVER used the idea of a "system" to describe their own socio-governmental structure. They discussed political ideas like monarchy, but in entirely different terms, and that matters.
3...2...1... Impact!
Whoops, back to the diatribes...
Don't get me wrong, I very much like public history. I work in a museum and have done for quite some time. I can easily see the results things like Horrible Histories (for my generation the books, for subsequent ones especially the TV show) have had on kids' ability to relate to and be interested in history.* Some works of popular history for adults are great, and in cities like mine tours quickly fill up with visitors hoping to learn about the local past.**
But (while this is probably not something most non-academics are aware of), having public history crammed down our throats is not ok. And this brings us to "impact", the dread buzzword that now haunts anyone in history and related disciplines.
Basically, the people with the money have decided that, if your work isn't accessible/understandable/relevant to the layman off the street, it's largely not worth funding.*** Work is going to be made available--before?! the editing process--online for anyone to get hold of (how will that look when all future citations come from inaccurate versions?); new PhD positions are being created with time to be taken off to do public history work... The "impact" of your work, though we all know how to judge scholarly value, is measured by what it does for non-historians.
That's all been said before, and griped about, in academic circles. But there were a few points I wanted to set down after a very interesting conversation with a friend/colleague (or two) yesterday. Fundamentally, most of them related back to this:
Who on earth would think of asking this of a scientist?
Now, like a good academic, let me qualify this. I am sure that some scientists are receiving money based on how they've been able to show a "public" dimension to their projects.**** There are super-cool public science initiatives; how many of us still hold Bill Nye in awe and reverence? But I think we can all understand that scientists really shouldn't be concerning themselves, when doing research, with being intelligible to non-scientists. I'm not bad at science; I've done some college-level calculus, physics, and astronomy, though I wouldn't want to pretend that this was any more impressive to a real scientist than them passing my history test. But if I can understand, as effortlessly as public history is meant to feel, your project, then it's probably not very useful. Science is about doing crazy things and pushing at the boundaries of human knowledge.
So is history. Historians aren't sitting here reinventing the wheel, we're discovering new wheels that make the cart roll in cool new ways.***** So why is there this idea that our research, if it will only interest other historians, shouldn't get the funding? That's demented, frankly. The behind-the-scenes research keeps refining our picture of the past, and that will affect how the public narratives get told, if that's what you're concerned with. Fund public history. But projects without immediate "relevance" or "impact" are just as valid. They are required to make any academic discipline rigorous and... well... alive. History without the obscure work doesn't get anywhere, because the public simply isn't equipped to handle all the nuance (and it's not all their fault, nor is there necessarily a reason they should care), and if we become obsessed with catering to it, actual research will get bogged down.******
Another angle opens up here. It is valid to say that the obscure research done by, say, medical researchers, while not intelligible in itself, has real impact on the community. Fine. It is also valid to say that since history deals with culture, it is part of its duty to hand this down and make this open to the people who, after all, make culture. That's also true. In fact, if I go into academia after my PhD, I can quite see myself preferring a teaching to a research position. But what bothers me about this line of thinking is that it assumes that all scientific research, by virtue of being Science!, is super-urgent and relevant, and that history, unless you try really hard, is irrelevant.
Nonsense. There are huge areas of science that have as much impact on our daily lives as historical studies. Did I mention I really like astronomy? But studying the origins of the universe does nothing, for the layman, beyond (if they keep up with it) increasing the bounds of knowledge. That's just historical research, for all intents and purpose. Studies about animal psychology--for instance, whether pigeons can distinguish between artists... again, not really sure what this does beyond letting us know that they can. Does it influence the public, or give it tangible benefits? Nope. It just means we know more things, and that is unambiguously good.******* History accomplishes this just as much. But it hasn't gotten the validation of the Science card, and so we're asked to do things unthinkable in other disciplines.
University PR departments will take scientific research and distort it (through simplification) to publish popular news articles; this produces grumbling (rightfully) and discussions about "scientific literacy". So we expect the public to get better-conversant with science, which is fine. Historians, however, are asked to do the legwork of making things accessible to the layperson, who isn't supposed to have to do any work. Far better would be to start assuming that the ability to understand culture--because we cannot escape culture any more than we can escape the laws of physics; it shapes us and always will, no matter how scientifically-advanced we become--is a necessary human skill; and understand that while history should always be made open to people, there is a ton of work that simply doesn't need to be because the historical discussion of academics is vital.
I wouldn't claim that history departments need as much of a budget as science ones do: we don't need to pay for, say, telescopes. (There's that astronomy thing again. Anyone want to give me a telescope?). But historians and scientists both do important work, and we shouldn't have to keep an eye on having to justify ourselves through "impact". The past is cool, and it's where we came from. That's enough reason to research it, right there. Anything that makes people love it more, I fully support. And some historians want to throw themselves into that work. While doing research, though, there's enough stress that I don't want to have to spend more time worrying about how to make people care about a 14th-century duchess in a corner of France. I could try, and would probably succeed; but that's not what my research is for. To each their own.
*Terry Deary's own attitude towards "actual" historians are, however, disturbingly erroneous and spiteful. But we won't deal with that here.
**Although the Telescope and the Corset of History do suggest how problematic the "take-away" can be.
***This is not yet a universal. I'm just trying to focus on the large problem, not the exceptions.
****I don't know of any offhand, but I don't want to make assumptions they don't sometimes share this problem.
*****This metaphor was ill-advised, perhaps, but I seem to have committed to it. You win some, you lose some.
******Again, we're not here yet. I'm talking about trends and implications!
*******Though really, it's also not--the development of better weapons is just really not something I can support. That's impact, but it's not a good thing.
Don't get me wrong, I very much like public history. I work in a museum and have done for quite some time. I can easily see the results things like Horrible Histories (for my generation the books, for subsequent ones especially the TV show) have had on kids' ability to relate to and be interested in history.* Some works of popular history for adults are great, and in cities like mine tours quickly fill up with visitors hoping to learn about the local past.**
But (while this is probably not something most non-academics are aware of), having public history crammed down our throats is not ok. And this brings us to "impact", the dread buzzword that now haunts anyone in history and related disciplines.
Basically, the people with the money have decided that, if your work isn't accessible/understandable/relevant to the layman off the street, it's largely not worth funding.*** Work is going to be made available--before?! the editing process--online for anyone to get hold of (how will that look when all future citations come from inaccurate versions?); new PhD positions are being created with time to be taken off to do public history work... The "impact" of your work, though we all know how to judge scholarly value, is measured by what it does for non-historians.
That's all been said before, and griped about, in academic circles. But there were a few points I wanted to set down after a very interesting conversation with a friend/colleague (or two) yesterday. Fundamentally, most of them related back to this:
Who on earth would think of asking this of a scientist?
Now, like a good academic, let me qualify this. I am sure that some scientists are receiving money based on how they've been able to show a "public" dimension to their projects.**** There are super-cool public science initiatives; how many of us still hold Bill Nye in awe and reverence? But I think we can all understand that scientists really shouldn't be concerning themselves, when doing research, with being intelligible to non-scientists. I'm not bad at science; I've done some college-level calculus, physics, and astronomy, though I wouldn't want to pretend that this was any more impressive to a real scientist than them passing my history test. But if I can understand, as effortlessly as public history is meant to feel, your project, then it's probably not very useful. Science is about doing crazy things and pushing at the boundaries of human knowledge.
So is history. Historians aren't sitting here reinventing the wheel, we're discovering new wheels that make the cart roll in cool new ways.***** So why is there this idea that our research, if it will only interest other historians, shouldn't get the funding? That's demented, frankly. The behind-the-scenes research keeps refining our picture of the past, and that will affect how the public narratives get told, if that's what you're concerned with. Fund public history. But projects without immediate "relevance" or "impact" are just as valid. They are required to make any academic discipline rigorous and... well... alive. History without the obscure work doesn't get anywhere, because the public simply isn't equipped to handle all the nuance (and it's not all their fault, nor is there necessarily a reason they should care), and if we become obsessed with catering to it, actual research will get bogged down.******
Another angle opens up here. It is valid to say that the obscure research done by, say, medical researchers, while not intelligible in itself, has real impact on the community. Fine. It is also valid to say that since history deals with culture, it is part of its duty to hand this down and make this open to the people who, after all, make culture. That's also true. In fact, if I go into academia after my PhD, I can quite see myself preferring a teaching to a research position. But what bothers me about this line of thinking is that it assumes that all scientific research, by virtue of being Science!, is super-urgent and relevant, and that history, unless you try really hard, is irrelevant.
Nonsense. There are huge areas of science that have as much impact on our daily lives as historical studies. Did I mention I really like astronomy? But studying the origins of the universe does nothing, for the layman, beyond (if they keep up with it) increasing the bounds of knowledge. That's just historical research, for all intents and purpose. Studies about animal psychology--for instance, whether pigeons can distinguish between artists... again, not really sure what this does beyond letting us know that they can. Does it influence the public, or give it tangible benefits? Nope. It just means we know more things, and that is unambiguously good.******* History accomplishes this just as much. But it hasn't gotten the validation of the Science card, and so we're asked to do things unthinkable in other disciplines.
University PR departments will take scientific research and distort it (through simplification) to publish popular news articles; this produces grumbling (rightfully) and discussions about "scientific literacy". So we expect the public to get better-conversant with science, which is fine. Historians, however, are asked to do the legwork of making things accessible to the layperson, who isn't supposed to have to do any work. Far better would be to start assuming that the ability to understand culture--because we cannot escape culture any more than we can escape the laws of physics; it shapes us and always will, no matter how scientifically-advanced we become--is a necessary human skill; and understand that while history should always be made open to people, there is a ton of work that simply doesn't need to be because the historical discussion of academics is vital.
I wouldn't claim that history departments need as much of a budget as science ones do: we don't need to pay for, say, telescopes. (There's that astronomy thing again. Anyone want to give me a telescope?). But historians and scientists both do important work, and we shouldn't have to keep an eye on having to justify ourselves through "impact". The past is cool, and it's where we came from. That's enough reason to research it, right there. Anything that makes people love it more, I fully support. And some historians want to throw themselves into that work. While doing research, though, there's enough stress that I don't want to have to spend more time worrying about how to make people care about a 14th-century duchess in a corner of France. I could try, and would probably succeed; but that's not what my research is for. To each their own.
*Terry Deary's own attitude towards "actual" historians are, however, disturbingly erroneous and spiteful. But we won't deal with that here.
**Although the Telescope and the Corset of History do suggest how problematic the "take-away" can be.
***This is not yet a universal. I'm just trying to focus on the large problem, not the exceptions.
****I don't know of any offhand, but I don't want to make assumptions they don't sometimes share this problem.
*****This metaphor was ill-advised, perhaps, but I seem to have committed to it. You win some, you lose some.
******Again, we're not here yet. I'm talking about trends and implications!
*******Though really, it's also not--the development of better weapons is just really not something I can support. That's impact, but it's not a good thing.
Well, where would YOU keep it?
Enough ranting lately, so I'm going to start doing something I've always wanted to do and post pictures of odd street names I've run across. We'll start with one from Dinan, my favorite little medieval Breton town (it's lovely, you should absolutely go):
This means "Street of the ditch, called the Cat's Hole".
It opens through the town walls, hence the ditch or moat. But there are no felines running around here. A "chat" or cat was a kind of siege engine which protected men from missiles thrown above and was thus good for getting close to walls (I've got a 16th-century text here describing a 14th-century battle, which also has the cats serving "as towers for throwing rocks against the walls"; take that as you will). So this street was where you kept your cat when it wasn't in use.
This means "Street of the ditch, called the Cat's Hole".
It opens through the town walls, hence the ditch or moat. But there are no felines running around here. A "chat" or cat was a kind of siege engine which protected men from missiles thrown above and was thus good for getting close to walls (I've got a 16th-century text here describing a 14th-century battle, which also has the cats serving "as towers for throwing rocks against the walls"; take that as you will). So this street was where you kept your cat when it wasn't in use.
Progressively stupider?
There's been a lot of upsetting news on lately (as always, I suppose), but of especial immediacy are the EU election results, which have showed, in brief, an alarming rise in anti-Europe, ultra-conservative parties as a proportion of the representatives. The word "neo-Nazi" is cropping up with truly distressing frequency. We can only hope that people will come to their senses before too much bad comes of all this.*
But it's always moments like this which make me wonder why some people are so often insistent on viewing the course of history as one of "progress".** I'm not saying there can't be improvements over time: the enfranchisement of women, the abolition of (official) racial discrimination--these were great recent moments of progress. But we are always so close to being able to do this, because absolutely nothing guarantees that a future generation won't just muck it up again.
Let's look at a few angles here. Gay rights: a very strong movement at the moment, in the States and elsewhere. Great! But while I do think/hope we're reaching a tipping point in the US, it wouldn't take that much at the federal level to cause some real setbacks (2016, what will you bring?). Even when one judge might overturn a ban, it immediately gets challenged, and in some cases successfully reinstated (at least temporarily). Sure, that's all part of the juridical process we have; but it's emblematic of the ease with which anti-progressive change can occur. While it seems that successive generations are becoming more liberal, and the weight of precedent is always a good thing to have on your side, the laws are always the function of a prevailing mood in time and can be made to change in whatever direction that mood is facing.
OK, I'm not really a modern political scientist or anything, so let's turn back to historical problems with "progress". Women in society, for example. This is an extremely uneven process. They were effectively excluded from public life during the Roman Empire (a generally unfair place), but saw an increasing flexibility (if of a secondary standing) during the Middle Ages. The laws got progressively (hah!) more restrictive as the Renaissance came on, a lot of the turbulence of the final years of the medieval period having caused greater codification along gendered lines. But culturally/socially, the Enlightenment was quite a relatively-female friendly period (we're looking always at the elites here, since pretty much everyone else, men or women, simply did not function on the same way--but of course rights at the village level etc. were of significant importance too. This is, however, less germane to our current issue). Then the Victorians happened, and that was a distinctly conservative period compared to the previous century. Women were far more circumscribed, legally and socially, than they had been before the French Revolution.*** Moreover, as men gained in public rights, women were left further and further behind. That's not progress.
Technology? By definition, this one tends to have more of a progressive slope, since it requires previous knowledge of scientific principles to grow upon. This knowledge has been building up steadily for quite a long while. But it's not so simple, either: in fact, thinking of technological progress is the error that leads terrifying numbers of people to assume the Romans came after the Vikings. The Romans had baths, didn't they? And built big domes and shiny buildings while the Vikings just lived in huts! They were so progressive! ...That's nonsense, of course: the Romans were what they were, and (as always) it was great if you were, say, one of the well-to-do citizens using the baths instead of the slave scraping their sweat off with a strigil. But that's not really the issue. The fact is that the Romans had baths because they thought baths were important. The Vikings built amazing sea-faring ships that far outdid anything the Romans produced on the tranquil Mediterranean, and they sailed across the entire Atlantic because that was what was important to them. "Technology" isn't one thing, and so we can't really just give it one historical trajectory. Also, more of it doesn't necessarily mean "better": are you really going to tell me that the ability to play Angry Birds wherever I want is useful?****
And of course, all of this is just the Western-centric view. To say that there has been global "progress" can't even begin to cope with the scale of the problems we are still facing, nor can it adequately express how history works. You can't even tell me that the European colonies of Asia or Africa were progress over what had come before just because they were later; and it is equal arrogance to assume that our own societies are only moving towards the better. We are (i.e. there are people who are) perfectly ready to return, it seems, to a fractured Europe where wars can still happen between the neighbouring countries (did no one pay attention to the last two hundred years of history?!) instead of working together in a civil manner. At least, that's what seems to have gone on yesterday. We will always be hanging at the edge of a cliff, and the idea of "progress" makes us complacent and forget what can happen.
Pessimist? Maybe. But I think it's more an accurate assessment of how people have always tended to work. Please, society! I would love to be shown wrong.
*For the record, voting for bad people just because you're not thoroughly chuffed with the not-bad people is a crappy tactic.
**The opposite prevalent attitude, nostalgia, can be equally annoying and will, I'm sure, get its own rant at some point! Wait until I've had a lousy day at the museum.
***I think this is causal, but don't have time to investigate. Anyone want to do a hypothetical history study?
****Actually, I bet that's out of date already. What are we playing today?
PS. I'm embarrassed, France. I can usually be patriotic towards you in a way I can't towards the US, because I am shielded from the crazies you harbor. But now you're making that very difficult. Please get your reality out of my idealism!
PPS. Interestingly, progress has not always been seen as a good thing: for instance, in the Middle Ages, it tended to mean "new taxes", and no one liked that. But that's a topic for another time; just wanted to point that out.
But it's always moments like this which make me wonder why some people are so often insistent on viewing the course of history as one of "progress".** I'm not saying there can't be improvements over time: the enfranchisement of women, the abolition of (official) racial discrimination--these were great recent moments of progress. But we are always so close to being able to do this, because absolutely nothing guarantees that a future generation won't just muck it up again.
Let's look at a few angles here. Gay rights: a very strong movement at the moment, in the States and elsewhere. Great! But while I do think/hope we're reaching a tipping point in the US, it wouldn't take that much at the federal level to cause some real setbacks (2016, what will you bring?). Even when one judge might overturn a ban, it immediately gets challenged, and in some cases successfully reinstated (at least temporarily). Sure, that's all part of the juridical process we have; but it's emblematic of the ease with which anti-progressive change can occur. While it seems that successive generations are becoming more liberal, and the weight of precedent is always a good thing to have on your side, the laws are always the function of a prevailing mood in time and can be made to change in whatever direction that mood is facing.
OK, I'm not really a modern political scientist or anything, so let's turn back to historical problems with "progress". Women in society, for example. This is an extremely uneven process. They were effectively excluded from public life during the Roman Empire (a generally unfair place), but saw an increasing flexibility (if of a secondary standing) during the Middle Ages. The laws got progressively (hah!) more restrictive as the Renaissance came on, a lot of the turbulence of the final years of the medieval period having caused greater codification along gendered lines. But culturally/socially, the Enlightenment was quite a relatively-female friendly period (we're looking always at the elites here, since pretty much everyone else, men or women, simply did not function on the same way--but of course rights at the village level etc. were of significant importance too. This is, however, less germane to our current issue). Then the Victorians happened, and that was a distinctly conservative period compared to the previous century. Women were far more circumscribed, legally and socially, than they had been before the French Revolution.*** Moreover, as men gained in public rights, women were left further and further behind. That's not progress.
Technology? By definition, this one tends to have more of a progressive slope, since it requires previous knowledge of scientific principles to grow upon. This knowledge has been building up steadily for quite a long while. But it's not so simple, either: in fact, thinking of technological progress is the error that leads terrifying numbers of people to assume the Romans came after the Vikings. The Romans had baths, didn't they? And built big domes and shiny buildings while the Vikings just lived in huts! They were so progressive! ...That's nonsense, of course: the Romans were what they were, and (as always) it was great if you were, say, one of the well-to-do citizens using the baths instead of the slave scraping their sweat off with a strigil. But that's not really the issue. The fact is that the Romans had baths because they thought baths were important. The Vikings built amazing sea-faring ships that far outdid anything the Romans produced on the tranquil Mediterranean, and they sailed across the entire Atlantic because that was what was important to them. "Technology" isn't one thing, and so we can't really just give it one historical trajectory. Also, more of it doesn't necessarily mean "better": are you really going to tell me that the ability to play Angry Birds wherever I want is useful?****
And of course, all of this is just the Western-centric view. To say that there has been global "progress" can't even begin to cope with the scale of the problems we are still facing, nor can it adequately express how history works. You can't even tell me that the European colonies of Asia or Africa were progress over what had come before just because they were later; and it is equal arrogance to assume that our own societies are only moving towards the better. We are (i.e. there are people who are) perfectly ready to return, it seems, to a fractured Europe where wars can still happen between the neighbouring countries (did no one pay attention to the last two hundred years of history?!) instead of working together in a civil manner. At least, that's what seems to have gone on yesterday. We will always be hanging at the edge of a cliff, and the idea of "progress" makes us complacent and forget what can happen.
Pessimist? Maybe. But I think it's more an accurate assessment of how people have always tended to work. Please, society! I would love to be shown wrong.
*For the record, voting for bad people just because you're not thoroughly chuffed with the not-bad people is a crappy tactic.
**The opposite prevalent attitude, nostalgia, can be equally annoying and will, I'm sure, get its own rant at some point! Wait until I've had a lousy day at the museum.
***I think this is causal, but don't have time to investigate. Anyone want to do a hypothetical history study?
****Actually, I bet that's out of date already. What are we playing today?
PS. I'm embarrassed, France. I can usually be patriotic towards you in a way I can't towards the US, because I am shielded from the crazies you harbor. But now you're making that very difficult. Please get your reality out of my idealism!
PPS. Interestingly, progress has not always been seen as a good thing: for instance, in the Middle Ages, it tended to mean "new taxes", and no one liked that. But that's a topic for another time; just wanted to point that out.
"Medieval" witchcraft
So, this morning, I saw an article shared about how a woman was beaten to death after being accused of witchcraft on Facebook.
That's horrifying and horrible. There's no real reason to comment further on that, because it's obvious.
It does seem as good a place as any to start documenting and addressing misuses of the word "medieval" in the public discourse.
To anyone who is a historian, or hangs around with medievalists, or whatever, this is not a new peeve,* nor do I intend to highlight anything particularly new--if only because the uses are so entirely predictable. The term medieval, in newspaper-speak, always refers to "backwards", "barbaric", "evil", and so on. Honestly, it's not very interesting. However, it's worth pointing out specific instances where the Middle Ages are being abused, in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will learn something concrete about history. And so I can let out some steam.
In this instance, of course, I didn't even have to click on the article itself to confirm my suspicion that it would be misusing its historical comparisons. The tagline itself talked about "going back to the Middle Ages".
Well, funny fact: what you really meant, more or less, is "going back to the Renaissance".
See, while witchcraft has often been more or less prevalent as a known element of society--this is pretty much true, in different guises, for most of European history--it didn't really become an issue until after the Protestant Reformation.
There were inquisitions before then, because of all those pesky heretics running around; but they were annoyed by rather than interested in accusations of witchcraft. They would tell the accusers to go away, basically. It wasn't pretend uses of magic that bothered them, it was issues of theology. If you hear about someone being burnt in the Middle Ages, most probably it's for religious (mis)beliefs, not for magic. This is not to say "witches" never got into trouble--but actually, mostly people just kind of accepted witchcraft in the background.
But the security of Catholicism was shaken up by the advent of the Protestants, and that's where things started to get ugly. A group on the defensive is far more dangerous than one that feels confident in its place: just look at evangelical Christians in American society today. Now witchcraft, on one side of the religious line or the other, could join heresy in the array of fear and justification for violent action.
The date of the Salem witch trials? 1692-3. That's so not medieval it isn't even funny. And that's just the most famous example. Heck, even going onto Wikipedia produces very interesting results. In the article Witchcraft, under History: Europe, the very first sentence begins "In Early Modern European tradition..." Medieval witchcraft wasn't a thing; the most famous treatise on the prosecution of witches is late 15th-century. And, interestingly, the Spanish Inquisition dealt much less with witches than any other inquisition in, say, France or Germany: Catholicism was much less challenged by Protestantism there, so no one needed to be as bothered.
I don't intend to outline the entire history of EM witchcraft here,** especially when it's so easy to see that simply using "medieval" to describe its modern recurrence*** is both lazy and really, really inaccurate. But we daren't say anything against the Renaissance, now do we? It wouldn't convey the same point as using medieval, which everyone knows as a bad thing... Nonsense.
Get over it, and get it right!
*Not that many medievalists aren't ignorant about surprising amounts of the period which aren't directly in their familiarity. This one is actually a particular example, so pay attention, folks.
**Although it's very easy to quickly scrounge up some internet information, Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles provides an excellent précis.
***Also, does the fact that these things can apparently still happen today mean that we're travelling in time? how about "society is still messed up, because that's how people are"? Just throwing it out there.
That's horrifying and horrible. There's no real reason to comment further on that, because it's obvious.
It does seem as good a place as any to start documenting and addressing misuses of the word "medieval" in the public discourse.
To anyone who is a historian, or hangs around with medievalists, or whatever, this is not a new peeve,* nor do I intend to highlight anything particularly new--if only because the uses are so entirely predictable. The term medieval, in newspaper-speak, always refers to "backwards", "barbaric", "evil", and so on. Honestly, it's not very interesting. However, it's worth pointing out specific instances where the Middle Ages are being abused, in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will learn something concrete about history. And so I can let out some steam.
In this instance, of course, I didn't even have to click on the article itself to confirm my suspicion that it would be misusing its historical comparisons. The tagline itself talked about "going back to the Middle Ages".
Well, funny fact: what you really meant, more or less, is "going back to the Renaissance".
See, while witchcraft has often been more or less prevalent as a known element of society--this is pretty much true, in different guises, for most of European history--it didn't really become an issue until after the Protestant Reformation.
There were inquisitions before then, because of all those pesky heretics running around; but they were annoyed by rather than interested in accusations of witchcraft. They would tell the accusers to go away, basically. It wasn't pretend uses of magic that bothered them, it was issues of theology. If you hear about someone being burnt in the Middle Ages, most probably it's for religious (mis)beliefs, not for magic. This is not to say "witches" never got into trouble--but actually, mostly people just kind of accepted witchcraft in the background.
But the security of Catholicism was shaken up by the advent of the Protestants, and that's where things started to get ugly. A group on the defensive is far more dangerous than one that feels confident in its place: just look at evangelical Christians in American society today. Now witchcraft, on one side of the religious line or the other, could join heresy in the array of fear and justification for violent action.
The date of the Salem witch trials? 1692-3. That's so not medieval it isn't even funny. And that's just the most famous example. Heck, even going onto Wikipedia produces very interesting results. In the article Witchcraft, under History: Europe, the very first sentence begins "In Early Modern European tradition..." Medieval witchcraft wasn't a thing; the most famous treatise on the prosecution of witches is late 15th-century. And, interestingly, the Spanish Inquisition dealt much less with witches than any other inquisition in, say, France or Germany: Catholicism was much less challenged by Protestantism there, so no one needed to be as bothered.
I don't intend to outline the entire history of EM witchcraft here,** especially when it's so easy to see that simply using "medieval" to describe its modern recurrence*** is both lazy and really, really inaccurate. But we daren't say anything against the Renaissance, now do we? It wouldn't convey the same point as using medieval, which everyone knows as a bad thing... Nonsense.
Get over it, and get it right!
*Not that many medievalists aren't ignorant about surprising amounts of the period which aren't directly in their familiarity. This one is actually a particular example, so pay attention, folks.
**Although it's very easy to quickly scrounge up some internet information, Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles provides an excellent précis.
***Also, does the fact that these things can apparently still happen today mean that we're travelling in time? how about "society is still messed up, because that's how people are"? Just throwing it out there.
The History Test
Just a brief one, since I'm travelling at the moment but am also feeling guilty about not having said much for a while. (It also doesn't help that no one has done anything funny or noteworthy at the museum for a little while. Come on, people!).
What I want to do is try to figure out a reasonable baseline for judging history awareness.
The initial entry standard, developed based on multiple years of experience, is to establish whether the candidate knows which came first: the Vikings or the Romans?
Answer: The Romans, with a roughly four-century gap between them.* Hopefully, this did not surprise you, since you are actually on this blog of all places.
A vast number of people, due to the prevalent notion of "history as progress" (a topic for another time, although see the Telescope as well), as well as a profound absence of knowledge regarding either period, really**, will say the Vikings were first, however. Whether it's actually a majority or no, I haven't counted, but it's LOADS (not to mention the people who want to know whether the Vikings are "Bronze Age").
Anyhow, this basic standard will let you know what kind of conversation you can then have--probably a good idea to work with the big picture here. But it also got me wondering what is a fair expectation of peoples' knowledge. When are you allowed to despair?***
So, I've been exploring the standard of the Millennium-by-Century--in part to counteract the effects of the Telescope and make sure people can get at least a general sense of change-over-time. So, what the Millennium-by-Century quiz does is ask, very simply, for the candidate to name a significant person, event, phenomenon, or trend, from each of the 10 centuries of the last millennium (i.e. back to the year 1000). Just ten things from history. And knowing where, within 100 years, they fall.
As a rough guide to the level of precision we're looking at here, here are my answers off the top of my head (they're different every time I do this):
20th century: First and Second World Wars
19th century: Industrial Revolution
18th century: Enlightenment
17th century: (Most of the) rule of Louis XIV
16th century: Rule of Mary Tudor
15th century: End of the Hundred Years' War
14th century: Breton War of Succession
13th century: (Most of the) building of Chartres Cathedral (in its current incarnation)
12th century: So many Cistercians
11th century: Norman Conquest of England
Obviously, my answers are very Euro-centric, because that's what I do; they're also mostly political, because again that's a lot of what I do (though honestly I consider myself a social historians). But the choices are infinite. It's really hard to get a wrong answer, unless you just simply don't know your history. (I had wanted to bring it back all the way to the year 0, but to be honest I am not particularly good with the late Roman Empire--so I can't expect that from others. Use for bonus points?)
Is this fair? I think so. And then people can know what they should look into!
In other history-quiz news, I don't regularly read Hark A Vagrant, but her 1066 quiz is quite a marvel.
*This chronology is from the English perspective. Let's keep things simple.
**I mean, all the people who say they would quite like to live in the Roman period (or 'Roman times' as it's commonly known here), are obviously only able to picture the smallest, most elite segment of society! But this, too, is a topic for another time.
***Please don't actually. In reality this is a great teaching moment! Help them learn! It's fun!
What I want to do is try to figure out a reasonable baseline for judging history awareness.
The initial entry standard, developed based on multiple years of experience, is to establish whether the candidate knows which came first: the Vikings or the Romans?
Answer: The Romans, with a roughly four-century gap between them.* Hopefully, this did not surprise you, since you are actually on this blog of all places.
A vast number of people, due to the prevalent notion of "history as progress" (a topic for another time, although see the Telescope as well), as well as a profound absence of knowledge regarding either period, really**, will say the Vikings were first, however. Whether it's actually a majority or no, I haven't counted, but it's LOADS (not to mention the people who want to know whether the Vikings are "Bronze Age").
Anyhow, this basic standard will let you know what kind of conversation you can then have--probably a good idea to work with the big picture here. But it also got me wondering what is a fair expectation of peoples' knowledge. When are you allowed to despair?***
So, I've been exploring the standard of the Millennium-by-Century--in part to counteract the effects of the Telescope and make sure people can get at least a general sense of change-over-time. So, what the Millennium-by-Century quiz does is ask, very simply, for the candidate to name a significant person, event, phenomenon, or trend, from each of the 10 centuries of the last millennium (i.e. back to the year 1000). Just ten things from history. And knowing where, within 100 years, they fall.
As a rough guide to the level of precision we're looking at here, here are my answers off the top of my head (they're different every time I do this):
20th century: First and Second World Wars
19th century: Industrial Revolution
18th century: Enlightenment
17th century: (Most of the) rule of Louis XIV
16th century: Rule of Mary Tudor
15th century: End of the Hundred Years' War
14th century: Breton War of Succession
13th century: (Most of the) building of Chartres Cathedral (in its current incarnation)
12th century: So many Cistercians
11th century: Norman Conquest of England
Obviously, my answers are very Euro-centric, because that's what I do; they're also mostly political, because again that's a lot of what I do (though honestly I consider myself a social historians). But the choices are infinite. It's really hard to get a wrong answer, unless you just simply don't know your history. (I had wanted to bring it back all the way to the year 0, but to be honest I am not particularly good with the late Roman Empire--so I can't expect that from others. Use for bonus points?)
Is this fair? I think so. And then people can know what they should look into!
In other history-quiz news, I don't regularly read Hark A Vagrant, but her 1066 quiz is quite a marvel.
*This chronology is from the English perspective. Let's keep things simple.
**I mean, all the people who say they would quite like to live in the Roman period (or 'Roman times' as it's commonly known here), are obviously only able to picture the smallest, most elite segment of society! But this, too, is a topic for another time.
***Please don't actually. In reality this is a great teaching moment! Help them learn! It's fun!
Directions for Research (or, Why Everyone in History Has the Same Name)
(With excuses to those who have already seen this topic elsewhere).
Another ongoing theme from my own research is the fact that everyone I study has the same name (e.g. Jeanne de Penthièvre, Jeanne de Flandre, Jeanne de Montfort, Jean de Montfort, Jean IV de Montfort, Jean de Blois-Penthièvre, Jean III, Jean II le Bon; Charles de Blois, Charles V, Charles VI....) As a matter of fact, it appears that 25% of the nobility in Brittany was called "Jean". Meanwhile, it was common, when a lineage had been reduced to a single heiress, for her husband to be required to take up the family first name of his spouse, to carry it on;* and a couple would happily name more than one child that simultaneously, as did certain dukes of Brittany. And even if a child may have originally had a different first name, upon their inheritance it might well "revert"; Duke Jean V was Pierre until 1399.
This stream of discoveries prompted some of my friends to propose a new avenue for future research, which, in its edited form, I have decided to reproduce here in order to stimulate a broader historical community:
One of the most under-researched aspects of the fourteenth century is the chronic first name shortage. Feudal lords responded by pressuring their serfs to concentrate on Jean(ne), a hardy and resilient name crop which was intended to prevent identity famine. However, the resulting overproduction led to a surplus which caused, and continues to cause, a gret deal of confusion. The effects of this "name poverty" and associated strife are particularly striking in Brittany of the period, but in this they were reflecting the longstanding trend in increasing first-name poverty within the French monarchy. Whereas under the Merovingian kings name innovation was at its peak, under the Carolingians name repetition increased perceptibly. Full repetitive name disorder, however, did not develop until the Capetians, after whom virtually all French kings were called Louis, Philip, or Charles. By the fourteenth century, the name event horizon had been passed and all kings for all intents and purposes became the same person. Even the desperate attempt to introduce new names such as 'Henry', 'Jean', and 'François' were thoroughly unsuccessful. Name confusion of this kind resulted in increasing social and political unrest. Although the trend of name poverty amongst the serfs was a passing phase, it became increasingly institutionalized in the French monarchy. With the growing social mobility of the mercantile classes, the gap in name density between the two social levels became more apparent. The lack of name-variation dehumanized the monarchy and soon became a symbol of social repression, the more rigid name-systems of the aristocracy opposing the innovative name-culture brought about by the budding third estate. The situation reached a breaking point with a chain of for Kings 'Louis' from 1610-1792, which culminated in the French Revolution.
In case some people might be confused, this is entirely spurious; the trends highlighted are for the most part entirely false. However, what makes it work so well for me is that the idea of a title-holder "for all intents and purposes" being the same person is, in fact, exactly what the idea was, especially as the monarchy transformed into something superior to the individual holder of the role. Hidden truths...
And for the record, some historians seem hell-bent on calling Duke Jean IV of Brittany Jean V, his son Jean VI, and his father Jean IV (he never actually had any number, not being a duke). FOR THE LOVE OF ALL WE HOLD DEAR, PLEASE STOP. The numbers are all we have to save us from the madness. Leave them alone.
That is all.
*Philippe Contamine gives an impressive list of "family first names"; for instance, sons of the Laval family (in Brittany) took the name Guy, those of the Coucy family were Enguerran, and so on. Meanwhile, the husband of Anne de Laval, formerly known as Jean de Montfort, was required to become "Guy de Laval", making him the thirteenth of that name after Anne's father, the twelfth--and if he refused the name, he would be subject to a fine of 100,000 livres! (see La noblesse au royaume de France de Philippe le Bel à Louis XII, 217-8).
Another ongoing theme from my own research is the fact that everyone I study has the same name (e.g. Jeanne de Penthièvre, Jeanne de Flandre, Jeanne de Montfort, Jean de Montfort, Jean IV de Montfort, Jean de Blois-Penthièvre, Jean III, Jean II le Bon; Charles de Blois, Charles V, Charles VI....) As a matter of fact, it appears that 25% of the nobility in Brittany was called "Jean". Meanwhile, it was common, when a lineage had been reduced to a single heiress, for her husband to be required to take up the family first name of his spouse, to carry it on;* and a couple would happily name more than one child that simultaneously, as did certain dukes of Brittany. And even if a child may have originally had a different first name, upon their inheritance it might well "revert"; Duke Jean V was Pierre until 1399.
This stream of discoveries prompted some of my friends to propose a new avenue for future research, which, in its edited form, I have decided to reproduce here in order to stimulate a broader historical community:
One of the most under-researched aspects of the fourteenth century is the chronic first name shortage. Feudal lords responded by pressuring their serfs to concentrate on Jean(ne), a hardy and resilient name crop which was intended to prevent identity famine. However, the resulting overproduction led to a surplus which caused, and continues to cause, a gret deal of confusion. The effects of this "name poverty" and associated strife are particularly striking in Brittany of the period, but in this they were reflecting the longstanding trend in increasing first-name poverty within the French monarchy. Whereas under the Merovingian kings name innovation was at its peak, under the Carolingians name repetition increased perceptibly. Full repetitive name disorder, however, did not develop until the Capetians, after whom virtually all French kings were called Louis, Philip, or Charles. By the fourteenth century, the name event horizon had been passed and all kings for all intents and purposes became the same person. Even the desperate attempt to introduce new names such as 'Henry', 'Jean', and 'François' were thoroughly unsuccessful. Name confusion of this kind resulted in increasing social and political unrest. Although the trend of name poverty amongst the serfs was a passing phase, it became increasingly institutionalized in the French monarchy. With the growing social mobility of the mercantile classes, the gap in name density between the two social levels became more apparent. The lack of name-variation dehumanized the monarchy and soon became a symbol of social repression, the more rigid name-systems of the aristocracy opposing the innovative name-culture brought about by the budding third estate. The situation reached a breaking point with a chain of for Kings 'Louis' from 1610-1792, which culminated in the French Revolution.
In case some people might be confused, this is entirely spurious; the trends highlighted are for the most part entirely false. However, what makes it work so well for me is that the idea of a title-holder "for all intents and purposes" being the same person is, in fact, exactly what the idea was, especially as the monarchy transformed into something superior to the individual holder of the role. Hidden truths...
And for the record, some historians seem hell-bent on calling Duke Jean IV of Brittany Jean V, his son Jean VI, and his father Jean IV (he never actually had any number, not being a duke). FOR THE LOVE OF ALL WE HOLD DEAR, PLEASE STOP. The numbers are all we have to save us from the madness. Leave them alone.
That is all.
*Philippe Contamine gives an impressive list of "family first names"; for instance, sons of the Laval family (in Brittany) took the name Guy, those of the Coucy family were Enguerran, and so on. Meanwhile, the husband of Anne de Laval, formerly known as Jean de Montfort, was required to become "Guy de Laval", making him the thirteenth of that name after Anne's father, the twelfth--and if he refused the name, he would be subject to a fine of 100,000 livres! (see La noblesse au royaume de France de Philippe le Bel à Louis XII, 217-8).
The Corset of History
"It's too big? I thought it was too small!"
...
An accessory for the Telescope of History? Perhaps.
The other day at work I got to help someone try on a corset, one of the modern ones we have lying around just for such a purpose. (I own several myself, although I was too lazy to put one on that morning and had ended up shuffling into the other work-owned one just for fun.) She was the first visitor who wasn't too nervous to try it--in fact, she was downright excited as I helped her into it with a minimum of poking and prodding. It wasn't a smooth process, as I discovered the top clasp of the busk was missing* and it was, as suggested above, too big for her. But we had a great time. She was fascinated by the feeling of a garment we have, culturally, discarded (despite centuries of successful incorporation into fashion in different forms**), and of course, dressing up in historical outfits is a blast. I marvel that I can get paid to do it, sometimes.
Fine. That was probably the best part of my day. So what is the Corset of History?
I spent much of the rest of the day, when I wasn't actually slinging corsets about, looking through a really wonderful book of women's fashion in Britain from the late 18th through the early 20th centuries. Specifically, I was reading up on the waist sizes of these dresses, something I was curious about ever since a (real) Victorian dress was up for sale on eBay and I noticed that it quite exactly fit my corseted dimensions.** And what makes this book so good is that it's all based on actual surviving clothing, carefully drawn, measured, deconstructed (metaphorically), and placed in the context of current trends. And what this means is that, for once, we have a measure of how things actually worked for women of the time.
If the Telescope is all about period-based lumping, the Corset is about the idealization and the stereotype.
We often get onto the topic of corsets at work because there are two striking posters advertizing "Celebrated C.B. Corsets",*** which gets people commenting--usually in a negative way, because they're the ones who don't dare actually try one on. (Seriously, they're fine to wear, unless you're doing it up crazy tight. Mind you, I don't mind not having to wear one every day. It takes forever to put on (relatively speaking), is very warm, and means I can't slouch, which is probably for the best but still isn't a comfortable posture for me for long periods, because I'm broken. But it's been replaced by some really unhealthy diets and the ideal of skinniness hasn't gone away--in fact, it's become even more a cultural fetish of late, since along with your corseted waist you were generally supposed to have some curves!--only now there aren't the fashion tools to help women accomplish this look.)
And sure, the advertisements show some seriously hourglass-shaped women, with a lovely, small waist. It's actually lovely artwork. But somehow this gets translated instantly into a perception of the reality of the period. Caveat time: sure, some women did go in for tightlacing; some still do. Sometimes it was more in fashion than others. And some of the stories that you hear about breaking bones are true; certainly, wearing a tight corset will, over time, reshape your ribcage. But none of that matters. What's going on here is that, despite the fact that this pictures are a) advertizements and b) not actual photographs, but drawings, that image instantly becomes that of every woman in the Victorian period (or the 18th century, let's be honest, because of the Telescope and the fact that people really don't know what period they're imagining (I know this because they ask)).
That's a problem. The movies don't help here because of the obligatory "put the girl in tight stays"**** scene--think Pirates of the Caribbean 1, anyone? But in history, women were real women who had real lives to live, and most of them didn't have the luxury of not being able to bend down.
To return to my research in the book, it's not a huge sampling because not all of the dresses had the waist sizes marked--but many of them did. The smallest waist I saw was 19 inches. That's pretty darn tiny; I think it was for a younger woman, and was definitely one of the more "elite" dresses there. So yes! People did make their waists very tiny, sometimes--if they were rich and would never have to do much, and if fashion was a major concern for them, and above all if they were actually built to be able to do this.
This caveat is important. There were waists of 30 inches or more, with bodices on--that's more than mine without. There were dresses owned by the same person from different periods in her life; the waistline got larger over time as she aged.
And after Miss-19-Inch, I think (off the top of my head) there was one at about 22, and then most were 24 and up. 25 inchest-27 was very common, right about where I'm at if I wear a very-comfortably-laced corset. I'm practically Victorian!
Because these women were all different sizes and shapes, and they had lives to live. The mistake that's being made at the museum is to take an advertisement as reality--literally like looking at a fashion mag today and saying "how did women manage to go around, live, work, play, without an ounce of fat or muscle on them?"***** Well, they don't. Models are not your average woman, even if the photo itself is accurate. The cultural ideal itself is interesting, if you make sure to bear in mind that it actually evolved over the decades, with looser/tighter looks, and even entirely different body shapes (think the shift from the Victorian hourglass to the Edwardian S-bend, visible even in the late 1890s) coming in and out of style. And looking at the models in a modern magazine might give you information about why it is some women diet and why dolls like Barbie are the subject of social commentary. But the assumption that if you were a Victorian woman (Telescope! because that was totally a thing), you would have to be squeezing yourself down to a 16-inch waist (considered the ideal among corset-connoisseurs today), is just wrong. And heck, even if you did, your body would get used to it eventually. It's only because we're not trained to it any more that corsets--which, on the scale of ridiculous fashions, is actually fairly tame in terms of long-term body impact--can be uncomfortable.******
There's also the issue that the haute couture of the rich is a lousy model for the rest of society, and I'm saying this as someone who studies the aristocracy. Corsets, as a fashion item, were not restricted to the elite, but the luxury of adhering to tiny waistlines would not have been available universally. People have always been willing to do stupid things for fashion, but there's a reason that such fashions are usually a status symbol--the extremes don't apply to most people. Once the ideal has spread to cover all of society, we're in real trouble about how we understand the actual significance of cultural elements, and the real experience of the time.
In short, the Corset of History warns us not to get stuck in the image, and to try the damn corset on.
*How is this even possible to break? I don't know.
**Sadly, it was too delicate for actual wear. Weep.
***Did you know Victorians did "hot pink"? I didn't.
****Yes, stays rather than corsets usually (if fashion historians want to quibble, feel free, but I'm not one and I'm just talking shape here), because those straight-sided creatures are distinctly less human-shaped and are going to be a lot cosier on the ol' ribs there. Regardless of the fact that in some movies (Disney's Brave leaps to mind) that's not even a period garment. Medieval corsets had an entirely different construction, without ribs (so far as I know).
*****This is not to attack models, but the fact that the pictures are so often airbrushed (increasingly less often, however) means that their relationship to reality is actually about as good as the Victorian corset drawings.
******Unless you break a rib. That's always uncofmrotable.
...
An accessory for the Telescope of History? Perhaps.
The other day at work I got to help someone try on a corset, one of the modern ones we have lying around just for such a purpose. (I own several myself, although I was too lazy to put one on that morning and had ended up shuffling into the other work-owned one just for fun.) She was the first visitor who wasn't too nervous to try it--in fact, she was downright excited as I helped her into it with a minimum of poking and prodding. It wasn't a smooth process, as I discovered the top clasp of the busk was missing* and it was, as suggested above, too big for her. But we had a great time. She was fascinated by the feeling of a garment we have, culturally, discarded (despite centuries of successful incorporation into fashion in different forms**), and of course, dressing up in historical outfits is a blast. I marvel that I can get paid to do it, sometimes.
Fine. That was probably the best part of my day. So what is the Corset of History?
I spent much of the rest of the day, when I wasn't actually slinging corsets about, looking through a really wonderful book of women's fashion in Britain from the late 18th through the early 20th centuries. Specifically, I was reading up on the waist sizes of these dresses, something I was curious about ever since a (real) Victorian dress was up for sale on eBay and I noticed that it quite exactly fit my corseted dimensions.** And what makes this book so good is that it's all based on actual surviving clothing, carefully drawn, measured, deconstructed (metaphorically), and placed in the context of current trends. And what this means is that, for once, we have a measure of how things actually worked for women of the time.
If the Telescope is all about period-based lumping, the Corset is about the idealization and the stereotype.
We often get onto the topic of corsets at work because there are two striking posters advertizing "Celebrated C.B. Corsets",*** which gets people commenting--usually in a negative way, because they're the ones who don't dare actually try one on. (Seriously, they're fine to wear, unless you're doing it up crazy tight. Mind you, I don't mind not having to wear one every day. It takes forever to put on (relatively speaking), is very warm, and means I can't slouch, which is probably for the best but still isn't a comfortable posture for me for long periods, because I'm broken. But it's been replaced by some really unhealthy diets and the ideal of skinniness hasn't gone away--in fact, it's become even more a cultural fetish of late, since along with your corseted waist you were generally supposed to have some curves!--only now there aren't the fashion tools to help women accomplish this look.)
And sure, the advertisements show some seriously hourglass-shaped women, with a lovely, small waist. It's actually lovely artwork. But somehow this gets translated instantly into a perception of the reality of the period. Caveat time: sure, some women did go in for tightlacing; some still do. Sometimes it was more in fashion than others. And some of the stories that you hear about breaking bones are true; certainly, wearing a tight corset will, over time, reshape your ribcage. But none of that matters. What's going on here is that, despite the fact that this pictures are a) advertizements and b) not actual photographs, but drawings, that image instantly becomes that of every woman in the Victorian period (or the 18th century, let's be honest, because of the Telescope and the fact that people really don't know what period they're imagining (I know this because they ask)).
That's a problem. The movies don't help here because of the obligatory "put the girl in tight stays"**** scene--think Pirates of the Caribbean 1, anyone? But in history, women were real women who had real lives to live, and most of them didn't have the luxury of not being able to bend down.
To return to my research in the book, it's not a huge sampling because not all of the dresses had the waist sizes marked--but many of them did. The smallest waist I saw was 19 inches. That's pretty darn tiny; I think it was for a younger woman, and was definitely one of the more "elite" dresses there. So yes! People did make their waists very tiny, sometimes--if they were rich and would never have to do much, and if fashion was a major concern for them, and above all if they were actually built to be able to do this.
This caveat is important. There were waists of 30 inches or more, with bodices on--that's more than mine without. There were dresses owned by the same person from different periods in her life; the waistline got larger over time as she aged.
And after Miss-19-Inch, I think (off the top of my head) there was one at about 22, and then most were 24 and up. 25 inchest-27 was very common, right about where I'm at if I wear a very-comfortably-laced corset. I'm practically Victorian!
Because these women were all different sizes and shapes, and they had lives to live. The mistake that's being made at the museum is to take an advertisement as reality--literally like looking at a fashion mag today and saying "how did women manage to go around, live, work, play, without an ounce of fat or muscle on them?"***** Well, they don't. Models are not your average woman, even if the photo itself is accurate. The cultural ideal itself is interesting, if you make sure to bear in mind that it actually evolved over the decades, with looser/tighter looks, and even entirely different body shapes (think the shift from the Victorian hourglass to the Edwardian S-bend, visible even in the late 1890s) coming in and out of style. And looking at the models in a modern magazine might give you information about why it is some women diet and why dolls like Barbie are the subject of social commentary. But the assumption that if you were a Victorian woman (Telescope! because that was totally a thing), you would have to be squeezing yourself down to a 16-inch waist (considered the ideal among corset-connoisseurs today), is just wrong. And heck, even if you did, your body would get used to it eventually. It's only because we're not trained to it any more that corsets--which, on the scale of ridiculous fashions, is actually fairly tame in terms of long-term body impact--can be uncomfortable.******
There's also the issue that the haute couture of the rich is a lousy model for the rest of society, and I'm saying this as someone who studies the aristocracy. Corsets, as a fashion item, were not restricted to the elite, but the luxury of adhering to tiny waistlines would not have been available universally. People have always been willing to do stupid things for fashion, but there's a reason that such fashions are usually a status symbol--the extremes don't apply to most people. Once the ideal has spread to cover all of society, we're in real trouble about how we understand the actual significance of cultural elements, and the real experience of the time.
In short, the Corset of History warns us not to get stuck in the image, and to try the damn corset on.
*How is this even possible to break? I don't know.
**Sadly, it was too delicate for actual wear. Weep.
***Did you know Victorians did "hot pink"? I didn't.
****Yes, stays rather than corsets usually (if fashion historians want to quibble, feel free, but I'm not one and I'm just talking shape here), because those straight-sided creatures are distinctly less human-shaped and are going to be a lot cosier on the ol' ribs there. Regardless of the fact that in some movies (Disney's Brave leaps to mind) that's not even a period garment. Medieval corsets had an entirely different construction, without ribs (so far as I know).
*****This is not to attack models, but the fact that the pictures are so often airbrushed (increasingly less often, however) means that their relationship to reality is actually about as good as the Victorian corset drawings.
******Unless you break a rib. That's always uncofmrotable.
History... but with Dragons
First up, let me say that I am all about "history, but with dragons".
Did I mention that I'm writing a novel? Well, I am, and now I have mentioned it: and it's very much the Hundred Years' War only with some more magic, some cultural changes when I feel like it, and of course some dragons.* Shameless plug!
And that seems to be a trend right now, sort of. Not a trend like, say, "vampires" (too popular for their own good) or "plucky heroines in a dystopia"--nothing so big. But there are a lot of them nonetheless, although in some ways it's ridiculous to lump them all into one category.
For instance, my novel, like those of GRRM (though I have a distaste for lumping his work, which I have major problems with, next to my own!**), is really just "fantasy", with a historically-inspired flavor, that also likes dragons. Because dragons are awesome.
And then there are works that are much more strongly linked to actual history. At the furthest end of the spectrum are works such as Naomi Novik's Temeraire and subsequent books, which I can highly recommend. It's the Napoleonic era, only there's an Air Corps in England--because people ride dragons. Dragon-riding, of course, has been done before (because, I must reiterate, dragons are awesome--why would you not want to ride one?)***. But the historical context is new.
What does it add? Well, it's an original context for dragons, obviously, and creates a particular kind of "let's revisit history" feel not otherwise attainable. But we can also ask, what does adding dragons to history do? It serves, if you will, as a highlighter to make unfamiliar issues we're accustomed to in a purely-historical context. It heightens themes. The Napoleonic era was characterized by increasing trends of colonialization, growing contact with unfamiliar, far-off societies. On a practical level, having dragons flying about lets you visit those places much more easily! But narratively, they act as a focus for the issues arising from the colonial aspirations of Europeans. Dragons themselves are, in their way, subjugated: is this acceptable? Their relations across cultures are shaped by, but in important ways different from the ways human strangers interact: what lessons can be learned from that?
[Aside: Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is also related to category, although it lacks any actual dragons, which does give it a different feel. I mention it in part because it is one of the most brilliant works of modern fantasy (the term is not meant to be ironic) I have ever read. You should read it too. Although it lacks the iconic dragon-ness, it again uses fantasy to elaborate upon historical themes (again in the Napoleonic era), especially gender balances, national myths, and the relevance of history itself. In young adult lit, Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy (and the fourth stand-alone book) does much the same: power is concentrated in the hands of demon-summoning magicians, whose magical power and relationships with their otherworldly servants (and the rest of society) is indicative of the problematic structures of power within an oligarchic polity.]
Most recently, I just finished Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw, which is actually a dragon society. That's cool: when was the last time you actually had an entire civilization of dragons, rather than dragons simply incorporated into human society? More specifically, that society is, with the necessary changes to accommodate dragon-ness, essentially early/mid-nineteenth-century England. There were humans in the past, and they still exist somewhere in the world, but are almost entirely physically absent from the story, and the dragon culture gets along just fine without them. Within their own sphere, then, the familial dynamics and social structures reflect values of our real historical time (including tensions between Protestants and Catholics, uncomfortable relations with the serving classes, and gender roles) but heighten them through the unfamiliarity of having it all be done by hat-wearing dragons. It makes you take notice of the underlying mechanics much more aggressively (though this is not to say that they cannot become evident in other historicizing genres, of course!).
[Second aside: Interestingly, the Novik books also have at least one dragon society (I have only read the first six, after which they no longer had pretty covers and are hard to find in England): in the heartlands of the African continent--I'm guessing it's the Great Rift Valley, but that could be entirely wrong--there are a group of dragons living without contact with humans. That opened up yet another social model with which to compare the human-dragon society.]
I have always felt that dragons (and, in fact, elves/fairies/whatnot) are most interesting insofar as they stem from different elements within the human disposition. Dragons, in addition to being awesome, are often the embodiment of negative human tendencies such as greed, violence, or a lust for power. (I explore this in a short story, The Price of Gold. Oops, second plug!). Clarke's fairies embody human actors in very much a historical mode, but without an essential element of human compassion; this makes them both familiar and unsettling.
This is not a particularly new observation in itself: myths and legends have long tended to be analyzed in terms of projecting our own fears, hopes, worries, etc. on an imaginary prospect. I do find it interesting that this is often tied (and has been tied for a good while) onto specific historical moments, as if dragons and their fantasy friends actually belong most in a familiar world, to shake it up and make it into something new. There also seems to be a preponderance of 19th-century settings, which is significant in itself (even the more modern Stroud books rely heavily on the impact of the great magician Gladstone, and Britain still functions in the mode of an Empire): a moment when society shifted away from what it had been**** and had to be redefined, with good options and bad.
Dragons, perhaps even more so than other fantastic creatures, can exemplify these choices in society. Because nothing sends a message across like a creature that mirrors our own concerns, but wears wings and breathes fire.
*It's called The Gates of Yesterday and can be read on-line (still in-progress) if you drop me a line to give you access.
**Hubris!
***Oh right. That would be epically dangerous. Also, they are not real.
****The telescope of history strikes again in our obsession with this.
[Edit: I just remembered that, in France, Pierre Pevel has a trilogy that also does the dragons-in-history thing--in the Paris of Louis XIII this time, so it's kind of a fantastic Alexandre Dumas. To a degree that one's more literary in character, in that it's goal is more reimagining the Three Musketeers only with a magical twist rather than working directly with the historical situation proper. On the other hand, recasting the power balances of Europe as manipulated by dragons could be a fair analogy. Still, since the dragons are not the actual figures of political power--in that, say, Richelieu is not a dragon, nor are any of the Spanish leaders with which France was, at the time, at war--the feel is different; frankly, the dragons feel more like an intrusion into the historical world (however literary and dramatized it may be) than the ones which fulfill a more integrated, social role. Still, they're quite a fun read (everyone loves a musketeer...).]
Did I mention that I'm writing a novel? Well, I am, and now I have mentioned it: and it's very much the Hundred Years' War only with some more magic, some cultural changes when I feel like it, and of course some dragons.* Shameless plug!
And that seems to be a trend right now, sort of. Not a trend like, say, "vampires" (too popular for their own good) or "plucky heroines in a dystopia"--nothing so big. But there are a lot of them nonetheless, although in some ways it's ridiculous to lump them all into one category.
For instance, my novel, like those of GRRM (though I have a distaste for lumping his work, which I have major problems with, next to my own!**), is really just "fantasy", with a historically-inspired flavor, that also likes dragons. Because dragons are awesome.
And then there are works that are much more strongly linked to actual history. At the furthest end of the spectrum are works such as Naomi Novik's Temeraire and subsequent books, which I can highly recommend. It's the Napoleonic era, only there's an Air Corps in England--because people ride dragons. Dragon-riding, of course, has been done before (because, I must reiterate, dragons are awesome--why would you not want to ride one?)***. But the historical context is new.
What does it add? Well, it's an original context for dragons, obviously, and creates a particular kind of "let's revisit history" feel not otherwise attainable. But we can also ask, what does adding dragons to history do? It serves, if you will, as a highlighter to make unfamiliar issues we're accustomed to in a purely-historical context. It heightens themes. The Napoleonic era was characterized by increasing trends of colonialization, growing contact with unfamiliar, far-off societies. On a practical level, having dragons flying about lets you visit those places much more easily! But narratively, they act as a focus for the issues arising from the colonial aspirations of Europeans. Dragons themselves are, in their way, subjugated: is this acceptable? Their relations across cultures are shaped by, but in important ways different from the ways human strangers interact: what lessons can be learned from that?
[Aside: Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is also related to category, although it lacks any actual dragons, which does give it a different feel. I mention it in part because it is one of the most brilliant works of modern fantasy (the term is not meant to be ironic) I have ever read. You should read it too. Although it lacks the iconic dragon-ness, it again uses fantasy to elaborate upon historical themes (again in the Napoleonic era), especially gender balances, national myths, and the relevance of history itself. In young adult lit, Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy (and the fourth stand-alone book) does much the same: power is concentrated in the hands of demon-summoning magicians, whose magical power and relationships with their otherworldly servants (and the rest of society) is indicative of the problematic structures of power within an oligarchic polity.]
Most recently, I just finished Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw, which is actually a dragon society. That's cool: when was the last time you actually had an entire civilization of dragons, rather than dragons simply incorporated into human society? More specifically, that society is, with the necessary changes to accommodate dragon-ness, essentially early/mid-nineteenth-century England. There were humans in the past, and they still exist somewhere in the world, but are almost entirely physically absent from the story, and the dragon culture gets along just fine without them. Within their own sphere, then, the familial dynamics and social structures reflect values of our real historical time (including tensions between Protestants and Catholics, uncomfortable relations with the serving classes, and gender roles) but heighten them through the unfamiliarity of having it all be done by hat-wearing dragons. It makes you take notice of the underlying mechanics much more aggressively (though this is not to say that they cannot become evident in other historicizing genres, of course!).
[Second aside: Interestingly, the Novik books also have at least one dragon society (I have only read the first six, after which they no longer had pretty covers and are hard to find in England): in the heartlands of the African continent--I'm guessing it's the Great Rift Valley, but that could be entirely wrong--there are a group of dragons living without contact with humans. That opened up yet another social model with which to compare the human-dragon society.]
I have always felt that dragons (and, in fact, elves/fairies/whatnot) are most interesting insofar as they stem from different elements within the human disposition. Dragons, in addition to being awesome, are often the embodiment of negative human tendencies such as greed, violence, or a lust for power. (I explore this in a short story, The Price of Gold. Oops, second plug!). Clarke's fairies embody human actors in very much a historical mode, but without an essential element of human compassion; this makes them both familiar and unsettling.
This is not a particularly new observation in itself: myths and legends have long tended to be analyzed in terms of projecting our own fears, hopes, worries, etc. on an imaginary prospect. I do find it interesting that this is often tied (and has been tied for a good while) onto specific historical moments, as if dragons and their fantasy friends actually belong most in a familiar world, to shake it up and make it into something new. There also seems to be a preponderance of 19th-century settings, which is significant in itself (even the more modern Stroud books rely heavily on the impact of the great magician Gladstone, and Britain still functions in the mode of an Empire): a moment when society shifted away from what it had been**** and had to be redefined, with good options and bad.
Dragons, perhaps even more so than other fantastic creatures, can exemplify these choices in society. Because nothing sends a message across like a creature that mirrors our own concerns, but wears wings and breathes fire.
*It's called The Gates of Yesterday and can be read on-line (still in-progress) if you drop me a line to give you access.
**Hubris!
***Oh right. That would be epically dangerous. Also, they are not real.
****The telescope of history strikes again in our obsession with this.
[Edit: I just remembered that, in France, Pierre Pevel has a trilogy that also does the dragons-in-history thing--in the Paris of Louis XIII this time, so it's kind of a fantastic Alexandre Dumas. To a degree that one's more literary in character, in that it's goal is more reimagining the Three Musketeers only with a magical twist rather than working directly with the historical situation proper. On the other hand, recasting the power balances of Europe as manipulated by dragons could be a fair analogy. Still, since the dragons are not the actual figures of political power--in that, say, Richelieu is not a dragon, nor are any of the Spanish leaders with which France was, at the time, at war--the feel is different; frankly, the dragons feel more like an intrusion into the historical world (however literary and dramatized it may be) than the ones which fulfill a more integrated, social role. Still, they're quite a fun read (everyone loves a musketeer...).]
A Fourteenth-Century Guide to Hairshirts (or, Everything You Never Wanted to Know about Wearing Your Cilice)
In 1371 at the canonization trial for Charles de Blois, duke of Brittany from 1341-1364 (when he died in a battle), much was made of hairshirts.* In it, I apparently counted and logged 44 references before giving up with an "etc." They have since become a constant theme of my research, which is weird. So, for my convenience and especially for any pious reader who might want to deck themselves out with this latest religious fashion accessory, here is what this source tells us about hairshirts--tips and tricks for the savvy devotee.
*Sérent, Antoine de. Monuments du Procès de Canonisation du Bienheureux Charles de Blois, Duc de Bretagne, 1320-1364. Saint-Brieuc: R. Prud'homme, 1921. All page numbers representative--the same information can be found repeatedly.
**A piece of Charles' hairshirt was in fact among the possessions of his widow, Jeanne de Penthièvre, upon her death in 1384 (see Arthur le Moyne de la Borderie, Inventaire du mobilier de Jeanne la Boîteuse, duchesse de Bretagne (1384). Nantes: Guéraud et Cie, 1854).
- Horsehair makes them appropriately scratchy (p. 107).
- It can be elegantly concealed beneath your clothes for a "private devotion" look. Only if your servants see you undress (p. 38) or happen to feel it through your outer clothing (p. 66) will anyone find out.
- Swear them to secrecy, it's only modest. But they'll tell everyone, so you can enjoy a good reputation! (p. 39)
- You have an exciting range of color choices: match your clothes with a hairshirt in red, black, or plain white (p. 76).
- The really good ones can be bought in Paris (p. 48).
- If you're feeling extra-charitable, you can give your old hairshirt (or a new one) to a deserving recluse (p. 52). Bonus points (but don't forget about that "secrecy" thing).
- And if people think it's strange that you have so many lying around, lie and say they're for someone else (p. 71).
- Warning: make sure to take it off before going to bed at night with your wife (p. 79). She may not share all your habits, and may not appreciate the fleas (p. 163). In fact, it's probably best if she just doesn't know you have one (p. 107).
- But she'll be really pleased to find you've stored some away in the treasure chests instead of gold (p. 121).
- It makes for a good corpse. If you have one on you when you die, people will be impressed (p. 31). And they can turn it into relics! (p. 102)
- Knotted cords, Franciscan-style. We recommend three--one for your chest, one at kidney level, and one around the belly. String and horsehair make good materials. These can go on top, to push the itchy shirt right up against your skin (p. 34); or sometimes below to really get the pressure of those knots (p. 79). Warning: may cause infection.
- Rocks in your shoes, to make sure you don't have unnecessary comfort while walking.
- A blanchetum, a wool garment worn under armor that is really good for hiding that hairshirt! (p. 38)
- Little cushions with hard fillings to use as your travel pillow (p. 179).
*Sérent, Antoine de. Monuments du Procès de Canonisation du Bienheureux Charles de Blois, Duc de Bretagne, 1320-1364. Saint-Brieuc: R. Prud'homme, 1921. All page numbers representative--the same information can be found repeatedly.
**A piece of Charles' hairshirt was in fact among the possessions of his widow, Jeanne de Penthièvre, upon her death in 1384 (see Arthur le Moyne de la Borderie, Inventaire du mobilier de Jeanne la Boîteuse, duchesse de Bretagne (1384). Nantes: Guéraud et Cie, 1854).
The Telescope of History
Guide: "This wall was built around 972! Isn't that cool?"
Mother to child: "Look, dear, that wall is from when Jesus was alive!"
...
OK, that's a slightly different scale of problem than I'm really able to address. But it is related to a very interesting phenomenon.
People see history through a telescope.
Or, better, they see history like a telescope: the closest bit is small, manageable, able to be seen in detail; then moving away, they get larger and less focused. What I mean is, our perspective on past time isn't even, when it comes to being able to make out details, sort out chronology, and above all, to understand differences. The farther back in time we go, the more we have a tendency to lump everything together.
This is different from the issue that, by and large, the father back we go the fewer sources there are for the historian to work with and so we can't necessarily investigate every last issue as thoroughly. Going back, there is greater willingness to create groupings which wouldn't have made much sense to contemporaries.
To illustrate:
It is fairly easy for the average adult today to differentiate between decades in the 20th century (many of which they might have lived through): the 90s are not the 80s are not the 70s are not the 60s... I imagine you can fill in the rest of the sequence.
Before the first World War, things get murkier. Despite being told that something is Victorian, many museum visitors will then ask "so when is this from?" There might be a disjunct between knowing the name of an era and having some dates to pin it on, but when I specify that it's from the last half of the Victorian era (say, 1870-1901), they would probably have a hard time knowing what had changed in context since the first half--despite this spanning over 6 decades.
Creeping backwards, "the Renaissance" is more or less a single period in our normal consciousness (possibly separate from the irritatingly-similar-feeling "Enlightenment"). Worse, the thousand years of "the Middle Ages" are all more or less cut from one cloth. "The Romans", with their centuries of expansion and shift from Kingdom to Republic to Empire are treated in the main as a single unit, like their earlier (they're earlier, right?) cultural model, the Greeks. We won't even attempt to delineate the Egyptians; I certainly couldn't properly identify and place the different eras of their expansive history. (And of course, all this refers only to the eras of history considered closely-enough linked with our own, Western culture to bring them to our public consciousness).
This is the reason why people think the Vikings are part of the Bronze Age (to leave aside the other problems people have in placing them chronologically). Strangely (and somewhat perversely) I think it is also the reason why Victorian things are confused with things people can actually remember, alongside things that are far older than the Victorians.* Pre-modern (essentially, pre-20th-century) history is all a great swath of "old", with some divisions more important than others.
This is not a complaint about the lack of public understanding (or teaching) of history, it is simply an interesting factor of how we view past cultures. As a medievalist, I like to break down the early Middle Ages, the central ones, the high, the late(r)... but of course there are reasons why "periodization" is railed against by academics! And an Egyptologist could do a far better job than I at marking similar points of evolution within their focus. These are not necessarily things that everyone needs to fully intuit (though all knowledge is good knowledge here, to be sure).
What it might be a complaint about, however, is how it leads us to treat the past. It annuls nuance. When thinking in monoliths, highly selective features will come to the forefront and push aside all the instances--more frequent than not, usually--where such-and-such was not the case. It encourages a focus on the breaks in society rather than the evolutions and continuities. And it makes everything bland. The pace of social evolution has certainly accelerated since the Industrial Revolution encouraged ever-more-rapid technological evolution, and we live at a turbulent social moment (moving, I hope, towards a better model). But this perspective makes people forget that people in the past were living also in their moment, that they experienced change (and certainly whined enough about the loss of the "good old days" to give any Victorian or twentieth-century-ian a run for their money), that their fashions evolved, and that, at their point in time, they too were modernity.
This is perhaps best encapsulated by the phrase, particularly common among British museum-goers, "those times". What times? All of the Victorian period? the Renaissance? Classical antiquity? Yes. Existence is relegated to a "type", in which the variations of experience are blurred. Everyone, no matter their background, will resort to this approximation of history for some era/place or another, because there is simply too much human experience to keep track of. But being aware that that's what we're doing--and this is something few people seem to be taught to bear in mind--means that we encourage ourselves to look for the human viewpoint even in the distant past instead of resorting to "types" that work only under abstracted rules.
It's not always easy, or helpful, to keep track of the details. But perhaps, at least for the man who came by asking in all sincerity whether the Vikings were homo erectus**, it would be a good place to start understanding the difference between hundreds and tens of thousands of years.
*In some cases, sure, the Victorian technology/artifacts/institutions did continue long after the period. But the same cultural context did not apply, so assuming their sweetshop sells the same sweets your parents ate is unlikely to produce results even though, yes, they're all sold in jars!
**He seemed dissatisfied with all our reassurances that they were in fact homo sapiens, just like us.
[Edit: A friend of mine has used this idea to generate a discussion about his own area of specialty. You can check it out here!]
Mother to child: "Look, dear, that wall is from when Jesus was alive!"
...
OK, that's a slightly different scale of problem than I'm really able to address. But it is related to a very interesting phenomenon.
People see history through a telescope.
Or, better, they see history like a telescope: the closest bit is small, manageable, able to be seen in detail; then moving away, they get larger and less focused. What I mean is, our perspective on past time isn't even, when it comes to being able to make out details, sort out chronology, and above all, to understand differences. The farther back in time we go, the more we have a tendency to lump everything together.
This is different from the issue that, by and large, the father back we go the fewer sources there are for the historian to work with and so we can't necessarily investigate every last issue as thoroughly. Going back, there is greater willingness to create groupings which wouldn't have made much sense to contemporaries.
To illustrate:
It is fairly easy for the average adult today to differentiate between decades in the 20th century (many of which they might have lived through): the 90s are not the 80s are not the 70s are not the 60s... I imagine you can fill in the rest of the sequence.
Before the first World War, things get murkier. Despite being told that something is Victorian, many museum visitors will then ask "so when is this from?" There might be a disjunct between knowing the name of an era and having some dates to pin it on, but when I specify that it's from the last half of the Victorian era (say, 1870-1901), they would probably have a hard time knowing what had changed in context since the first half--despite this spanning over 6 decades.
Creeping backwards, "the Renaissance" is more or less a single period in our normal consciousness (possibly separate from the irritatingly-similar-feeling "Enlightenment"). Worse, the thousand years of "the Middle Ages" are all more or less cut from one cloth. "The Romans", with their centuries of expansion and shift from Kingdom to Republic to Empire are treated in the main as a single unit, like their earlier (they're earlier, right?) cultural model, the Greeks. We won't even attempt to delineate the Egyptians; I certainly couldn't properly identify and place the different eras of their expansive history. (And of course, all this refers only to the eras of history considered closely-enough linked with our own, Western culture to bring them to our public consciousness).
This is the reason why people think the Vikings are part of the Bronze Age (to leave aside the other problems people have in placing them chronologically). Strangely (and somewhat perversely) I think it is also the reason why Victorian things are confused with things people can actually remember, alongside things that are far older than the Victorians.* Pre-modern (essentially, pre-20th-century) history is all a great swath of "old", with some divisions more important than others.
This is not a complaint about the lack of public understanding (or teaching) of history, it is simply an interesting factor of how we view past cultures. As a medievalist, I like to break down the early Middle Ages, the central ones, the high, the late(r)... but of course there are reasons why "periodization" is railed against by academics! And an Egyptologist could do a far better job than I at marking similar points of evolution within their focus. These are not necessarily things that everyone needs to fully intuit (though all knowledge is good knowledge here, to be sure).
What it might be a complaint about, however, is how it leads us to treat the past. It annuls nuance. When thinking in monoliths, highly selective features will come to the forefront and push aside all the instances--more frequent than not, usually--where such-and-such was not the case. It encourages a focus on the breaks in society rather than the evolutions and continuities. And it makes everything bland. The pace of social evolution has certainly accelerated since the Industrial Revolution encouraged ever-more-rapid technological evolution, and we live at a turbulent social moment (moving, I hope, towards a better model). But this perspective makes people forget that people in the past were living also in their moment, that they experienced change (and certainly whined enough about the loss of the "good old days" to give any Victorian or twentieth-century-ian a run for their money), that their fashions evolved, and that, at their point in time, they too were modernity.
This is perhaps best encapsulated by the phrase, particularly common among British museum-goers, "those times". What times? All of the Victorian period? the Renaissance? Classical antiquity? Yes. Existence is relegated to a "type", in which the variations of experience are blurred. Everyone, no matter their background, will resort to this approximation of history for some era/place or another, because there is simply too much human experience to keep track of. But being aware that that's what we're doing--and this is something few people seem to be taught to bear in mind--means that we encourage ourselves to look for the human viewpoint even in the distant past instead of resorting to "types" that work only under abstracted rules.
It's not always easy, or helpful, to keep track of the details. But perhaps, at least for the man who came by asking in all sincerity whether the Vikings were homo erectus**, it would be a good place to start understanding the difference between hundreds and tens of thousands of years.
*In some cases, sure, the Victorian technology/artifacts/institutions did continue long after the period. But the same cultural context did not apply, so assuming their sweetshop sells the same sweets your parents ate is unlikely to produce results even though, yes, they're all sold in jars!
**He seemed dissatisfied with all our reassurances that they were in fact homo sapiens, just like us.
[Edit: A friend of mine has used this idea to generate a discussion about his own area of specialty. You can check it out here!]
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