Grumbly post about women
Jul. 1st, 2012 10:05 pmFrom earlier in the month, I found this
post on the History Girls blog interesting. Not for the content, but the reactions and comments. Yes, women worked outside the house, and ran businesses too. You know all those widows who "took over the family business when their husband died". More than likely, they were continuing doing what they'd been doing all along, but under their own name now.
Curious then, the pervasive idea that women "in the past" only occupied limited roles as mothers, servants, whores or such, when reality was so much more complicated and interesting. Is it because most novels (and now other media) are about middle and upper class women? With the development of the middle class, you have a group of women who don't *have* to work, and were probably proud of that fact. (I don't know much about fashion history, but to me a crinoline says "I can dress like this because I DON'T HAVE TO WORK."). Their daughters might not have shared this fondness for doing nothing, but that's a digression.
Why and how are for another day. Today is, does it matter? Of course it does. Firstly, as fiction writers, there's so much more potential for characters to have adventures and take part in interesting stories, and still be a creation of their world. Secondly though, the limited roles for women conceit enforces the idea that women were repressed and dependent on men until (insert favourite decade) but now they are free and independent. And this is part of the bigger idea that society is continuously progressing upwards, that society is continuously getting better. Which is a very dangerous idea to internalise. Te progress of society is not always upwards or for the better. (End grumble.)
But how to show the alternative, that women were more than just homemakers and child rearers? Examples are dismissed as anomalies, or "she had money so she could do what she wanted", or "she was working class so she could do what she wanted". Enough examples and it becomes obvious they're not anomalies?
I could share the ones I come across. At least the more interesting/easy to present ones, but is that just preaching to choir?
post on the History Girls blog interesting. Not for the content, but the reactions and comments. Yes, women worked outside the house, and ran businesses too. You know all those widows who "took over the family business when their husband died". More than likely, they were continuing doing what they'd been doing all along, but under their own name now.
Curious then, the pervasive idea that women "in the past" only occupied limited roles as mothers, servants, whores or such, when reality was so much more complicated and interesting. Is it because most novels (and now other media) are about middle and upper class women? With the development of the middle class, you have a group of women who don't *have* to work, and were probably proud of that fact. (I don't know much about fashion history, but to me a crinoline says "I can dress like this because I DON'T HAVE TO WORK."). Their daughters might not have shared this fondness for doing nothing, but that's a digression.
Why and how are for another day. Today is, does it matter? Of course it does. Firstly, as fiction writers, there's so much more potential for characters to have adventures and take part in interesting stories, and still be a creation of their world. Secondly though, the limited roles for women conceit enforces the idea that women were repressed and dependent on men until (insert favourite decade) but now they are free and independent. And this is part of the bigger idea that society is continuously progressing upwards, that society is continuously getting better. Which is a very dangerous idea to internalise. Te progress of society is not always upwards or for the better. (End grumble.)
But how to show the alternative, that women were more than just homemakers and child rearers? Examples are dismissed as anomalies, or "she had money so she could do what she wanted", or "she was working class so she could do what she wanted". Enough examples and it becomes obvious they're not anomalies?
I could share the ones I come across. At least the more interesting/easy to present ones, but is that just preaching to choir?
