Our county historical society submits a column to the local papers called 100 Years Ago. They use clips from the old newspapers that were published around the county by the various small towns. The columns are always interesting, full of a variety of crimes like stealing chickens or horses from the local farms. A woman shoving her husband down the cellar steps. Robbers breaking into stores and stealing food. Kids stealing teams and wagons to go for joy rides. Such a different world but still the same basic human nature.
But this NEWS BRIEF, as it was titled, made me realize how difficult it must be for writers of historical fiction to get things correct:
"Every young lady may mark it down as a fact that if she flirts and associates with "pick ups" she will soon have no others for associates. No matter how unjust it may be there will always be a suspicion that those who are not above making acquaintances in this way are not as pure in heart and mind as they ought to be. It would be unjust to say no pure minded girls flirt. They do and many of them lose their purity by so doing. Others, though not so unfortunate, are subject to suspicions, which every woman should be above."
Wow! Talk about your moral high ground. Those people would be shocked if they were dropped into today's world. I remember when I was growing up they still stamped BASTARD on birth certificates and the women who had children out of wedlock were shunned by other women and thought easy prey by the men.
Just some odd thoughts to keep in mind if you write stories that take place in the past. It's not just the clothes and cars and foods that are different, but the moral attitudes also.
And a quote from Thomas Hardy:
"The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things."
3 comments:
This sounds pretty much like my mother circa 1968.
Yeah, I remember my mother wouldn't smoke in front of her father because he thought women who smoked were tramps. And she was married with three kids. Such a different world back then.
The birth certificates in Alberta I remember were marked "illegitimate" up until 1970 or so. My brothers passed around a story of a girl they went to school with that she had gone out with a womanizing "bad boy", and after that they thought she was easy. Women had to be very careful who they socialized with even if nothing happened.
There were some sports I wanted to participate in as a youngster and was told repeatedly by my mother that those were "boys' games", not suitable at all for a girl. Since I had grown up with three older brothers I didn't understand what the fuss was all about, and kept playing with trucks, tractors, legos and train sets. The dolls bored me to death.
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