In Praise of Victorian Living
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009One of the reasons I bought this URL was because I wanted to write about the joys and the pitfalls of the way things used to be, to celebrate the good and bad old days, to expose the flaws in the belief that things used to be better, as well as the flaws in the belief that things used to be worse.
The divorce rate was really low during the Victorian era, when (at least in Britain) you had to be a member of Parliament, and stuff through a bill in order to split with your wife. It was always “your wife” because Parliament was exclusively male. I am developing the opinion that this system was supported by the upper middle class Victorian habit of having servants to do just about everything around the house. If not for these staffing arrangements, citizens would have stormed Parliament to demand serious and immediate revision to the divorce laws.
If this was 1875, I wouldn’t look at the wreck that the toddler has made of the living room and wonder why my husband was never moved to tidy up, I’d go off in a tirade against the slovenliness of the help. After a long night spent walking a colicky baby, we wouldn’t be at each other’s throats, we would be sending the footman out with an urgent note requesting a staffing agency to send us a competent nurserymaid. Bad dinners and untidiness wouldn’t be internal assaults upon our partnership, they would be a common enemy. When he couldn’t find his jogging socks, or my handbag was in the wrong place, we wouldn’t yell at each other about who moved what and why, we would rise up, united in discontent, and fire the housekeeper.
Today is our seventh wedding anniversary and there’s a cleaning lady vacuuming the hall. I’m delighted about both of those things.