Herland and Mr. B Speaks!

The 16th installment of Mr. B Speaks! makes reference to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novella Herland.

Gilman is best known as the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper." Much has been written about "The Yellow Wallpaper" which really does not need to be repeated here. Suffice it to say that Gilman suffered from postpartum depression and a medical establishment that thought sending women into isolation was a good way to cope with depression.

(On an entirely personal note, I have been visiting hospitals for the past month as my father recovers from major surgery to his spine and removal of his gallbladder. The tendency of medical professionals to make self-assured blanket statements while not really communicating anything or being forthright about cause and effect hasn't changed much--it makes you appreciate Dr. House.)


Throughout the 18th century, male physicians
began to replace midwives (midwife depicted here) at
childbirth. Unfortunately, they were rather clueless. This is
one area where male ingenuity and ambition did not in fact
benefit women (there are many other areas where it has).

 In Herland, Gilman advocates a society where women don't have to suffer for being the principle child-bearers of the race. For most of history, the complications of pregnancy and the inherent weakness of newborns (making them entirely reliant on lactating females) have made women both vulnerable and worshippable, depending on whether you are talking to Freud or, uh, Freud.

Gilman's solution is birth control and community support. The novella fails to address the independent nature of individual decision-making, but then most utopias fail to take competing alphas, mavericks, rebels, iconoclasts, and just plain irresponsible people into account. And forget about the inherent self-interest of most people who want what they want when they want it and have to be persuaded by a moral belief/system that giving up what they want is actually a good idea.

Still, while not quite as unique as some of my college instructors believed (Dorothy Sayers' book Gaudy Night discusses many of the same ideas that Gilman proposes), Gilman presents an interesting contrast to other feminists--then and now--who want to eliminate the male, pregnancy, babies, and the potential for a conservative family life. Like any good romance, at the core of Herland is a working male-female relationship.

In my view, the Committee for Literary Fairness errs in using Herland as their politically correct dumping ground.

The saga continues!

Am I the Only One Who Dislikes New Blogger Stats?

I really dislike the stats area on the posts page of the new Blogger interface. I tried for about twenty minutes yesterday morning to get rid of it and gave up. I'm now using the old interface.

And I'm happy with the old interface, but I'm going to rant about the stats area on the new interface anyway.

I love it when people read my blog. I love it when they send me an email or post a comment. But I don't check my stats. Ever. I really don't want to know. My blog is a chance for me to post stuff that interests me: historical notes, parts of my writing, reviews. I enjoy writing, and I enjoy trying to improve my writing. But I'm not trying to be popular.

I feel sometimes that the Internet has become the equivalent of a high school prom. This is one major reason I'm not on Facebook. Almost every person who talks to me about Facebook--even to praise it--talks about it in popular terms: the number of comments, the numbers of "friends," the number of links. After which I get to hear about who "unfriended" whom and why this person had to block that person, and why so and so got offended by somebody else's comments or pictures. And, man, is this high school or what?

I realize that for many people, the Internet is a source of income. Shoot, I post on Examiner.com. I also realize that for many people, like myself, writing is a source of income, and, well, electronic publishing is here to stay (as I can personally attest). I even realize that there are benefits to a networking site like Facebook.

But that's work. In my working life as a teacher and my other working life as a struggling writer, I have to worry about people's opinions. And I accept that as a given. I still don't want to spend every minute of every hour of every day worrying about whether I'm "cool" or making a splash.

When it comes to Blogger, I just want to communicate my ideas. It's important to me to be as clear as possible--to create posts for a potential reader rather than write to myself. (I can write to myself on my home computer or even long-hand in my journal.) But the fun of Blogger, for me, has always been the writing itself. One reader/one comment is enough to make my day.

Before anyone points out the obvious, I will admit that I should be able to look at the stats on the new interface and shrug my shoulders. If it really doesn't matter . . . But having them there, literally under my nose--when I didn't ask for them--is annoying. It reminds me of Facebook tiffs, of comments like "I don't like this" or "I don't like you" (as if such responses were the equivalent of cogent arguments), of identity becoming tied to ephemereals like the number of "hits" a person gets. It transports me back to high school.

And I really don't want to go back.

What Did They Know About Babies?

In the 15th installment of Mr. B Speaks! Mr. B reluctantly admits that Pamela gets married without having the night-before-the-wedding "talk" with her mother. Instead this talk is provided by the loud, somewhat obnoxious Mrs. Jewkes.

A wonderful Victorian postcard from Wikipedia,

depicting an aggressive form of birth control.

Since Pamela is a country-bred girl, she wouldn't be completely unprepared for the concept of sexual congress. She did spend her teen years in a more sheltered environment than that experienced by lower-class women of the time. However, this was not yet the age of Victoria; in even upper-class houses, close living would make ignorance of bodily functions a complete impossibility. As I mention in a far earlier post, even as late as Jane Austen (who was perceived as a embarrassingly earthly by her refined nieces and nephews), the acts of the flesh would have been commonalities of life. In comparison, our modern era often delivers a bizarre combination of prudish prurient permissiveness whereby a partially clad body is instantly sexualized by those who take offense and by those who take an interest while both the offended and the interested are scandalized at the idea of having to share a bedroom or bathroom.

But what would Pamela know about how babies are made?

The equating of sex with conception happened as early as the Bible: just think of all those "begats." What exactly happened at the point of conception was not understand fully until the 19th century. One idea put forward by scientists in the 1700s was that the male or female carried the preformed baby (homunculus) within either the sperm or the egg; the sexual act triggered the baby's growth. The idea of shared genetic material is a relatively recent development.

Whatever the prevailing theories, Pamela would have been as prepared and unprepared as new, blushing, virginal brides have ever been with the caveat (considering her time period and personality) that she would have been somewhat less coy than her blushing creator, Samuel Richardson.

Easter in the Eighteenth Century

Like many holidays in the post-Reformation world, Easter became more an excuse for festive wildness than religious devotion.

The Medieval Catholic Church supplied pageantry and ritual coupled with religious devotion. The Protestant Reformation did away with much of the ritual. Protestants leaders like Henry VIII wanted to keep in the ritual (he just wanted to remove the pope from the equation). However, Henry VIII--however unwillingly--opened the door to the purer form of Protestantism that wanted to replace ritual entirely with individual testimony/scripture reading (and Henry VIII found it useful to detest ritual when it meant he could relieve churches of their belongings).

However, the rituals didn't vanish. Instead, they retreated into folklore/beliefs in magic and other older customs. Christmas underwent a similar transformation. This is one major reason why the Puritans in America didn't celebrate Christmas (or other ritualized celebrations). The American Christmas is the result of comparatively "new" traditions though even today, English Christmases tend to be far more, uh, worldly than so-called commercial American Christmases. To understand an English Christmas, think Thanksgiving plus Halloween plus the aftermath of a football game when the home-team won. The Christmas story is in there somewhere.

Apparently, post-Reformation Easters weren't all that dissimilar--in fact, most festivals in 1700 England could be described as "excuses to harass the neighbors and drink." (Making it more and more understandable why the Puritans were so un-enthused about bringing over these traditions.)

There was a particular Easter tradition called peace-egging which is basically trick-or-treating--for eggs! The eggs were sometimes dyed. Sometimes, the trick-or-treaters would sing. There could possibly be a connection here to "egging" a house that doesn't give you a treat on Halloween! And a possible connection to caroling. My guess is that certain traditions simply lend themselves to being used . . . no matter what the occasion!

The picture is teenage me with an egg tree, a tradition that my mom started (or continued) in our family. She would cut a bare bush or tree limb in early spring (often as the result of pruning). We would then hang blown, dyed eggs from the limb. I don't know if there is a pagan/folklore connection. To me, the egg tree simply always meant "Easter"! At one point, when I was working at a business that wouldn't allow any religious decorations, I brought in my own egg tree. Another woman, also a Christian, brought in a palm branch. There's something to be said for symbolism that totally flies under the radar because nobody gets it but the people who produced it. (Though it could also say something sad about the gap in American education.)

Dissenters and Atheists in the Eighteenth Century

In 1700 England/Britain (the change from England to Britain began in 1707, but it was still a fairly new concept at the time of Pamela), religious conflicts were less between Protestants and Catholics and more between established Protestants--Anglicans--and Dissenters/Non-conformists, i.e. Puritans or Evangelicals.

Pamela is a non-conformist in spirit although she attends/supports the Anglican Church. Her religious feelings are raised in the 13th installment of Mr. B Speaks! and dealt with directly in the 14th installment. In both cases, Pamela's critics entirely fail to understand the nature and reality of her religious attitudes, falling back instead on cliches about "religious people"; this is not, unfortunately, atypical in academe. Academic critics quite often fail to appreciate non-political/non-sociological factors in general, resulting in the rather bizarre black-hole that dogs much literary criticism.

During the 1700s, becoming an Evangelical or Dissenter or Methodist was most common amongst the rising merchant class. Much like today, these religious positions were considered crass and embarrassing by the wealthy intelligentsia of the upper-classes. When Wilberforce converted to evangelicalism, he was already a member of Parliament. He was not only careful of his reputation during his initial exploration of evangelicalism (though far more out-spoken later), he considered his conversion might force him to leave Parliament. He was convinced by friends that he would do more good in Parliament than as a preacher, and he was hugely instrumental in the abolition of the slave-trade by British merchants.

As a member of the wealthy upper-class--though not the intelligentsia--Mr. B has little interest in personal conversion (at least in Book 1). However, he would not have endorsed atheism. Although atheism as a concept had been batted around for years amongst English literary circles, the belief in the supernatural was too strong for it to have any lasting impact. (I am referring specifically to atheism as the deliberate proposal that there is no god or gods rather than as a challenge to orthodoxy/state religion.) The average intellectual was more likely to be a deist than an atheist. It would take another 100 years for atheism to become "cool."

Sir Humphrey laying down the

unwritten rules of society.

In general, Mr. B's attitude can be summed up by a quote from BBC's Yes, Prime Minister. When funds to the arts are challenged, Sir Humphrey is scandalized. When Bernard points out that nobody actually listens to government-funded radio, Sir Humphrey replies, "Well, neither do I! But it's vital to know that it's there!"

This pretty much encapsulates the eighteenth-century, upper-class attitude towards the Church of England: "I may not believe or go or care, but it's vital to know that it's there!"