I'm just generally disgruntled these days. I've got that feeling that things are coming to an end, that it's time for a change and to start something new, but I don't really know what yet. (At least, I don't know which of a few possibilities. Reisefieber, I guess. What I'd really like to do it jst to retire, quit working, but given that all the things I'd like to do after that require money, I don't think that's happening anytime these next few decades.
That reminds me of something I read not long ago. It was in a book a hundred or so years old, and the narrator commented that she was always hearing young women wishing they were men, so they couold go do the work of the world. Her comment was that it was funny how often those were the most incompetent fluttery sorts, the ones least able to actually support themselves, who ought to be most grateful to have been born in a sphere in which they'd be taken care of all their lives.
It's a nice thought on my more strenuous days, that I could have been a Victorian lady on her pedestal with nothing more to do than pick flowers and twirl my parasol, or a 1920s matron, sent to a resort with my nanny and children for the summer while my husband worked in the city and came up on weekends. (In my more common-sensible moments, of course, I realize how I'd hate either fancy cage.) But also it was those women, or the corresponding upper class men who wrote all those books in which the women had those lovely leisurely lives. My ancestors were all too busy working.
Even in Jane Austen's time, when the women of the house were expected to know how to keep house (unlike their descendents who believed the more useless, the more upper-class), I suspect farmwives and servants far outnumbered the women who had time to spare. It might be interesting to read Jane Austen rewritten from the servants' point of view. Or maybe not:
"Scrubbed the floors again today. I might not have to do it every third day if the young ladies could be bothered to wipe their feet. The master and mistress had a screaming argument; why do they think none of use can hear when they're shouting at the tops of their lungs?"Posted by dichroic at June 20, 2006 02:15 PM"Laundry day, ugh. My hands are still bleeding. I think Miss Fanny has a suitor. Good. If he marries her that will be one less set of petticoats to starch."
"Ironed yesterday's laundry all day. We barely rescued the linens from the line before the storm set in, but at least I got to stay indoors after that. Miss Fanny crying, quarrelled with the suitor. Yesterday I had to threaten to call the mistress when he tried to kiss me over the laundry tub, so she's well rid of him. But of course I can't tell her that."
"Scrubbed the floors again. The housekeeper says that the young master has been sent down. One more gentleman to fight off. I'd leave here but where would I go?"