Should I try to get my house listed before building works?

[JoceAndChris]

8)

 

[Penners]

I don't like 2009 and would rather be in 1809

I suspect that your problem with living in 1809 would be that you have already experienced life in 2009. So you know what is possible in terms of cleanliness, hygiene, medical treatment, pain relief, domestic comfort, warmth, ease of travel - I could go on tenfold.

The farmer's wife in 1809 has never experienced any of these things, so she has no idea of how life could be. Therefore you are, of course, correct. The contrast, being unknown to her, cannot make her unhappy.

I think it's easy for us to romanticise the past, but I suspect they had their own stresses, cares, dis-satisfactions, hates, worries and so on. I doubt they were fewer - just different.

I hope that doesn't sound patronising.

 

[Moo]

I do sympathise with Joce's sentiments, but although I can imagine living a contented life without many of today's comforts, I come up against a brick wall when I contemplate doing some of the simple things I enjoy in the manner of 1809 (or even 1909).
For example, yesterday I made jam with the rhubarb from my low-tech allotment. I used my mother's ancient scales with proper weights and my grandma's preserving pan. But the clean water came from the indoor tap and I didn't have to cart fuel to stoke the stove to heat the water. Perhaps I'd feel different about those chores if they'd always been part of my life and nobody had ever told me that there were alternatives.
Trying to measure happiness is like driving smoke in a wheelbarrow.

 

[JoceAndChris]

8)

 

[Flyfisher]

The modern world and myself don't suit, which is why I'm removing myself to the 18th C as far as I possibly can.

At least you have that option, unlike the farmer's wife you seem to envy. Beware greener grass etc etc.

But I think the digression had better end here, VAT is less inflammatory!

Fair enough, although I'd dispute the bit about VAT. I sure we could all have a really inflammatory digression on taxation. :wink:

Happy 1800s (but glad to read you're feeling happier about 2009 now).

 

[Penners]

Maybe it's not so bad here in 2009! :wink:

That's the ticket! Now let's have three rousing choruses of Always Look On The Bright Side of Life.

 

[Hatster]

Women in the C19 were certainly not all uniformly satisfied with their husband, 7 children and work on a farm. To take just one evidence base, there are a set of harrowing interviews from the late C19 conducted with women who were in hospital after a miscarriage / abortion, in which working women described the work that they believed had caused them to miscarry, the effects that having another child would have, their terror about childbirth, the amount of money they had to live on and feed the children - truly distressing to read (and good work by the interviewers, who were in the difficult position of conducting interviews about abortion without anyone admitting at any point that an illegal abortion had been performed). Again, for many working-class women, the First World War, with the chance to earn their own money in a factory, was the first time that they had had enough to eat. I read an interview with a middle-aged, married woman who had gone to work in a factory during the war, as her husband had done before the war - she said that he had moaned about how hard factory work was, and agreed it was a long day, but still said that compared to being a housewife and mother, it was an easy job.

Similarly, depression is certainly not a 20th century phenomenon and the result of having too much time on our hands - if you look through European writings from at least the 15th century onwards, you'll find descriptions of mental states which certainly seem extremely similar to what would today be diagnosed as depression. If anything, I think we might be able to argue that attitudes towards certain types of mental illness such as depression were more accepting in the early modern period than they are now.

Ahem. I shall shut up and get back to discussing VAT.

 

[CHRIS]

I don't like 2009 and would rather be in 1809, even if it had meant being snuffed out with TB at a young age or reviled as a fallen woman. If you met me you would see straight away that I don't belong here

I used to like to think like this until during the birth of my Daughter a few weeks ago, my wife had some sudden complications and without the help of modern medicine and surgery I think there would have been a good chance that one of them my have died, I even asked the question of what would have happened 100 years ago and I got a strange look from the doc and all he did was shake his head.

Anyway I hated it as a kid in East London having to go outside to the loo and have bath in the kitchen when many friends had radiators and bathrooms - its not all its cracked up to be!!!!

 

[Schoolmarm]

Women in the C19 were certainly not all uniformly satisfied with their husband, 7 children and work on a farm.....// ...... If anything, I think we might be able to argue that attitudes towards certain types of mental illness such as depression were more accepting in the early modern period than they are now.

Ahem. I shall shut up and get back to discussing VAT.

Brilliant post and sums up what I think the "olden days" were like. We seem to assume that they were so simple they didn't feel pain, worry cold or hunger and of course despair.

 

[JoceAndChris]

8)

 

[Hatster]

More than a little fun being poked at Troilus, I can't help thinking! Especially when he dreams he's hugging Criseyde and wakes up and finds it's his pillow.

 

[JoceAndChris]

8)

 

[Flyfisher]

But today we divorce our husbands and smash up the family unit, destroying chilren's self-belief, and don't think that's any improvement at all, I think people should try to put up with eachother a whole lot more.

They may have been hungry but today we are all fat, apart from the rich and fashionable who court hunger and boniness. They had thin-related diseases, we have fat ones.

Rather too much generalisation going on regarding this topic, methinks. Of course there are quality-of-life extremes in all ages, but I'd bet that the average is far higher today than it ever was in times now past.

 

[Penners]

I love Chaucer.

You'll be aware that the definitive modern translation of Chaucer was done by Nevill Coghill. You won't be aware that he was my grandfather's cousin.

Jus' name-droppin'!

 

[Schoolmarm]

Rather too much generalisation going on regarding this topic, methinks. Of course there are quality-of-life extremes in all ages, but I'd bet that the average is far higher today than it ever was in times now past.

Agreed.

 

[DaveBrigg]

A recent foray into family history revealed my Great-grandfather lived in a terraced house in Fulham in 1901. He was lodging with his cousin, who was married with a young daughter. In the same house were another couple, their daughter and another lodger. The house had six rooms in total, which can't have been much fun. When he married though, he moved a couple of streets away, to another terrace, which was shared between three families. In 1911 the couple, with three young children, occupied three rooms; a fourth child arrived soon after. In 1919 my Great-grandmother died, aged 36 - Great-grandfather remarried and the four children were split up for adoption or placed in a children's home.

On the other side of my family, the Great-grandparent's neighbours in an Oxford terrace were a couple with 12 children, aged between 22 and 11 months. Apart from being able to turn out your own football team, I can't see many advantages to such a way of life.

 

[JoceAndChris]

True enough

I'll keep my worthless opinions to myself in future.

 

[Flyfisher]

Aye, and you try telling the young people of today and they won't believe you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo