-------- Original Message --------
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 3 Mar 2004 to 4 Mar 2004 (#2004-65)
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, March 5, 2004 6:00 am
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
There are 22 messages totalling 656 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. George Eliot and Church thanks!
2. Sweeps (3)
3. C3 Children (6)
4. Injuries from tight-lacing (7)
5. George Eliot and Church
6. Authors' Mistakes
7. Chimney Sweeps
8. CFP: New Developments in Pre-Raphaelite Poetry (3/15/04; MLA '04)
(2)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 20:31:22 -0800
From: Molly Youngkin <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: George Eliot and Church thanks!
Thanks to all who responded to my query about George Eliot. You
confirmed what I thought to be the case, and it was great to have some
extra details when I discussed Eliot in my class today.
Best,
Molly
Molly Youngkin
California State University Dominguez Hills
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 07:32:25 +0000
From: zeta mcdonald <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Sweeps
Hi All
I need a hand in locating images of chimney sweeps throughout the
Victorian period, particularly juveniles. I am interested in any type of
image, including paintings, drawings, cartoons and advertisements. Any
help much appreciated.
Zeta McDonald
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------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 08:30:36 -0000
From: Lesley Hall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: C3 Children
C3 was a term initially, I think, used for army recruit classification
and subsequently (? possibly post the 1904 Committee on Physical
Deterioration) applied to the 'unfit' more generally. (And I think not
just by the eugenically minded but by those who proposed environmental
factors as causative.)
Lesley Hall
[log in to unmask]
website http://www.lesleyahall.net
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 08:37:51 -0000
From: Judith Flanders <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Injuries from tight-lacing
What Chris's query began with was the question of whether there are any
*verifiable* instances of damage from tight-lacing. I am intrigued that
in all the posts since, there have been none: fiction, and
engravings/drawings are by definition not actuality; I have seen
glass-plate negatives of Bassano's photographs where the waists are
reduced by what looks like a Victorian version of typing fluid. I -- and
many others who have spent far more time on it -- doubt the veracity of
much contemporary magazine correspondence: it appears to be a mix of
anecdotage and (as I suggested in my last post -- I don't want to seem
obsessed by this) sub-soft-porn.
The closest we have got is the mention of the skeleton in the Mutter
Museum in Philadelphia -- is there anyone on-list who knows more about
it?
Best
Judith Flanders
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 08:40:32 -0000
From: Judith Flanders <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: C3 Children
Someone with more knowledge of Brittain may have a better answer, but in
Britain today, sociologists/social workers and allied trades use ABC
categories as a substitute for the older fashion of upper/middle and
working classes. They are then broken down into A1, A2 etc. C3 today is
lower working class, probably with unemployed parents.
Best
Judith Flanders
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 09:11:12 -0000
From: Michel Faber <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Injuries from tight-lacing
Judith Flanders, noting that none of the instances of damage from
tight-lacing is verifiable, added:
> The closest we have got is the mention of the skeleton in the Mutter
> Museum in Philadelphia -- is there anyone on-list who knows more about
> it?
It should be remembered that museum skeletons do not hold together by
themselves. They have to be assembled, glued and pinned together. This
is why there are occasional controversies about the exact shape of early
hominids etc. It would be the simplest thing in the world to mount a
human skeleton whose rib cage slanted inwards at a (excuse the pun)
breathtaking angle.
Best wishes,
Michel Faber
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 09:24:43 -0000
From: Chris Willis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: C3 Children
Hi!
Genie wrote:
>Reading Vera Brittain's *Testament of Youth*, my
>students and I came across a reference to "C3
>children."
I think it just means they're classed as being in social class C3. I
forget exactly how the categories worked, but I think C3 was the poorer
section of the working class.
Similar alphanumeric classifications were used later in the century by
the army to grade the fitness of recruits (C3 meaning the recruit was
virtually at death's door) but this presumably wouldn't have been
applicable to children.
All the best
Chris
================================================================
Chris Willis
[log in to unmask]
www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/
"There's nothing immoral in my books - only murder." (Agatha Christie)
================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 09:01:18 -0500
From: The Menons <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: George Eliot and Church
Sorry this is a bit late, but there is a fascinating analysis, based on
her letters and novels, of Eliot's break with her father in Rosemarie
Bodenheimer, The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans; George Eliot , Her Letters
and Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994).
Pat Menon
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 15:02:29 -0000
From: Susan Hoyle <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: C3 Children
I would understand this as a reference to the social classification used
by the UK Registrar General until not so long ago: Class A, Class B,
Class C1, C2 and C3, and (iirc) Class D. Once I knew exactly what these
categories implied, but that memory has gone the way of so many
others... However, assuming that Class D is the derelict, unemployed
and generally lumpen section of society, Class C3 would be the unskilled
labourer and his family.
I don't know when this nosology was introduced (so apologies to Patrick
if it is not Victorian), nor indeed am I sure that this is what Vera B
intended by C3.
hth
Susan
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 07:58:32 -0500
From: Hugh MacDougall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Sweeps
James Montgomery, ed., "The Chimney-Sweeper's Friend, and
Climbing-Boy's
Album" (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824)
contains two woodcuts on the subject by the English artist Cruickshank,
as well as a lot of valuable written materials on the subject..
Hugh C. MacDougall
8 Lake Street
Cooperstown, NY 13326-1016
[log in to unmask]
http://www.oneonta.edu/external/cooper
http://www.oneonta.edu/external/ccal
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 06:49:11 EST
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Authors' Mistakes
A few weeks ago someone was looking for authors' embarrassing mistakes,
especially in translation or misreading, if I remember. Here are two:
In a review of The Bronte Myth by Lucasia Miller, Daphne Merkin writes:
"With great relish Miller hauls up a 1936 biography of Emily by Virgina
Moore, called 'The Life and Eager Death of Emily Bronte,' which
purported to be a rigorous examination in which 'especial and
respectful' attention had been paid to primary sources. In her zeal to
bring new light to bear on the elusive Bronte's lost lover, Moore
misread the title of one of her manuscript poems as "Louis Parensell"
instead of "Love's Farewell.'" The review appeared in the New York
Times Book Review, February 29, 2004, p. 7.
And here is another on Freud, if you consider it Victorian or not:
Alan C. Elms wrote about Marie Balmary's Psychoanalyzing Psychoanalysis:
Freud and the Hidden Fault of the Father (1982): "The punch line was
'Rebecca, you can take off your wedding-gown, you're not a bride any
longer.' Freud included it in a letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess,
who apparently didn't need to be told why it was funny. Balmary
mistranslated the punch line and misunderstood the joke, then built on
that tottering foundation a whole book of speculations about Freud and
his family."
Matt Demakos
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 10:39:41 +0100
From: Timothy Mason <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Injuries from tight-lacing
Here, for whatever it may be worth, is a web-site maintained by a
'corset-aware- doctor' -
http://www.staylace.com/medicaladvice/medical.htm Amongst those who are
in favour of tight-lacing - which is apparently making a come-back - it
is firmly believed that it does no harm, if done properly, that the
sensations produced are enjoyable, and that the horror-stories are, in
the main, just that - although, as with many pleasures, there are always
some who will indulge to excess, offering easy targets for stern
finger-pointers.
Best wishes
Timothy Mason
Université de Paris 8
http://perso.club-internet.fr/tmason/index.htm
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 20:08:11 +1100
From: Anne Whitfield <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Sweeps
Hi,
I found some websites that show some photos, prints, etc.
http://www.flueseason.com/chimney_sweeps1.htm
http://www.ssnewstelegram.com/news/2004/january/nt0116sweep.htm
Also try the National Chimney Sweep's Guild.
Regards,
Anne Whitfield.~
http://www.geocities.com/anne_whitfield/index.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/HisFicCritique
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 09:18:48 -0800
From: Karla K Walters <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Injuries from tight-lacing
On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 08:37:51 -0000 Judith Flanders
<[log in to unmask]> writes:
> What Chris's query began with was the question of whether there are
> any
> *verifiable* instances of damage from tight-lacing. I am intrigued
> that
> in all the posts since, there have been none: fiction, and
> engravings/drawings are by definition not actuality;
Perhaps the reference to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg might be considered
fiction, but I will provide a few quotes from his book on the
subject--Ladies' Guide on Health and Disease (1886).
First, he gives indirect, anecdotal popular media evidence: "We read
the other day in a newspaper of a young woman who actually broke a rib
in the attempt to gain another half-inch on her corset string." (p. 249)
Then he explains the corset is "a cause for consumption", caused, he
asserts, by friction of the lungs against the rib cage and insufficient
oxygen supply to the blood. He then explains that the ribs are fastened
to the sternum by "flexible cartilages" which by constantly bend with
the movement of the lungs. "But when the chest is imprisoned in a
corset, this constant movement becomes impossible; and the consequence
is that a process of stiffening is set up, and after a time the once
flixible, yielding cartilages become as rigid as the rest of the ribs.
The
ievitable result of this change is a permanent limitation of the
movements of the lungs" (p. 252).
He then offers the following evidence, apparently made on clinical
examination: "The chest ought to be capable of expansion from two to
five inches,--even greater expansion is attainable. but if you put a
tape-line around one of tese corset-stiffened chests you will be unable
to obtain more than a scant quart-inch of difference in measurement
between the chest when empty and when filled to its utmost capacity. We
have often tried the experiment when making physical examinations of
the chest, and though the patient is almost always anxious to do her
best, in order to demonstrate if possible what every lady wil eagerly
contend form, that her corset neger did her any harm because it was worn
so loose, and so draws up her shoulders to her utmost and makes a
despearte attempt to swallow more air than there is room for, we have
often found that the expansion of the sdies of the chest was so slight
as to be impoerceptible" (p. 253).
In subsequent sections about heart disease and dyspepsia, he refers to
animal studies, not human subjects, but he does claim to have examined a
woman at Bellevue Hospital in New York City whose liver was nearly
bisected by tight lacing and offers the following evidence that the
internal organs migrate or change shape because of tight lacing in order
to support heavy skirts:
"A physician of eminence, upon making a post mortem examination of a
woman who had worn heavy skirts suspended from her wait for many years,
beginning the practice in early childhood, found the liver dragged down
into the pelvis and entirely cut in two, the separate protions being
only yeld together by a fibrous cord"(p. 256)
He does not give specific reference to this, but perhaps this "physician
of eminence" published this post mortem study in one of the medical
journals, such as Lancet.
Karla Walters
Bellevue, WA
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 10:19:53 -0800
From: "Peter H. Wood" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Injuries from tight-lacing
I have seen a biography of E.M. Somerville and E.Oe. Ross (authors
of
"The Real Charlotte" and "The Irish R.M.", both of which were
brilliantly produced on British TV and later on PBS in the '80's and
'90's). On one of the photographs taken whilst they were swimming, the
rib-cage deformation, presumably caused by tight corsetting was clearly
visible.
Peter Wood
<[log in to unmask]>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 18:51:48 +0000
From: Gillian Kemp <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Chimney Sweeps
4 March 2004
Zeta
In Newport, Isle of Wight there is a memorial to a little chimney sweep
named Valentine Grey who died through the cruelty of his master in 1822.
There was an outcry over this child's death and a memorial was erected
through public subscription. I think there may be a booklet about him.
It might be worth contacting the Isle of Wight County Press
<www.iwco.co.uk> as they are very helpful. There used to be a waxwork
of this little lad in the Waxworks Museum in Brading - it may still be
there and there may be a postcard too!
Gillian
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 18:35:07 +0100
From: Timothy Mason <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: C3 Children
Susan Hoyle wrote:
>I would understand this as a reference to the social classification
> used by the UK Registrar General until not so long ago: Class A, Class
> B, Class C1, C2 and C3, and (iirc) Class D. Once I knew exactly what
> these categories implied, but that memory has gone the way of so many
> others... However, assuming that Class D is the derelict, unemployed
> and generally lumpen section of society, Class C3 would be the
> unskilled labourer and his family.
>
>
>
I think the letter-coding was introduced by the Advertising industry,
although I can't remember when. The Registrar General first used a
classification by occupation in the 1911 Census, and the one which then
became standard was introduced in 1921, but this was numbered (I, II,
IIIi, IIIii, IIIiii, IV and V). The IIIiii category referred to
unskilled labourers.
Might it not be an acronym for something like Child Care Centre
children?
Best wishes
--
Timothy Mason
Université de Paris 8
http://perso.club-internet.fr/tmason/index.htm
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 19:46:32 -0000
From: Lesley Hall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: C3 Children
Might I reiterate that this derived from army classification of fitness
to fight (A1 etc), generalised to other sections of the population: It
has nothing to do with the much later - I think well post World War II -
classification of people into social classes ABCD (which I don't think
have more than a couple of subnumbers each, if any).
Lesley Hall
[log in to unmask]
website http://www.lesleyahall.net
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 19:47:03 -0000
From: Lesley Hall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Injuries from tight-lacing
> the photographs taken whilst they were swimming, the rib-cage
deformation,
> presumably caused by tight corsetting was clearly visible
There are other factors which might cause ribcage 'deformation', and I
am not sure that we should rush to make assumptions that in the case of
any given individual it had anything to do with tight-lacing. (Anymore
than tight-lacing had anything to do with Charlotte Bronte's death!) One
of my first questions as a medical historian, if not a doctor, would be,
any history of asthma? rickets?
Lesley Hall
[log in to unmask]
website http://www.lesleyahall.net
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 15:35:32 -0500
From: Kathleen McCormack <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: CFP: New Developments in Pre-Raphaelite Poetry (3/15/04;
MLA '04)
Dear Dr Tobin,
Please consider the paper described in the following proposal for
reading at the 2004 MLA session on "New Developments in
Pre-Raphaelite Poetry." It draws on a small part of my research
for a book-length script now under consideration at a major university
press which in several ways strengthens the connections between
George Eliot and the Pre-Raphaelites.
Thanks for reading and considering my work.
Yours truly,
Kathleen McCormack
Middlemarch:
Reading George Eliot Reading William Morris
In 1868, while George Eliot was composing Middlemarch, two experiences
helped contribute to the process. She received Georgiana Burne-Jones’s
confidences about her marital problems while on a holiday arranged
specifically for that purpose in Yorkshire, and she read William
Morris’s The Earthly Paradise.
The places where George Eliot and G. Burne-Jones met and the
circumstances of the marriage, together with George Eliot’s creative
methods in general, indicate that she composed parts of Middlemarch
(and, later, Daniel Deronda) to encode her responses to Edward
Burne-Jones’s refusal to end his relationship with Maria Zambaco.
Characters, settings, and plots in the novel convey George Eliot’s
opinion of the husband’s actions by dignifying and celebrating his
wife’s attractions and by warning about the deadly potential of his
mistress.
Indeed Middlemarch also warns about competitors for neglected
affections, a warning based on Morris’s feelings for his friend’s
betrayed wife (Penelope Fitzgerald). Morris shares with Will Ladislaw
(who takes a similar interest in Dorothea), his given name; his mop of
curly hair; his assumption of a courtly love role; his marked artistic
inclinations; an interest in medievalism; a fondness for an undervalued
wife; and nascent political tendencies. Like Ladislaw, who composes his
own poem about the unattainability of Dorothea, Morris wrote courtly
love poems.
George Eliot’s inclusion of this character not only creates a new
reading of Middlemarch, but also an entirely novel way of reading Morris
and his work, specifically as Middlemarch subtext. My project develops
partly by ascertaining the extent to which Ladilsaw’s poem about
Dorothea resembles Morris’s poetry, what links she establishes with
Morris’s work through multiple allusions to Chaucer, and the extent to
which she draws on The Earthly Paradise as a parallel text.
George Eliot never based the characters in her novels on a single model.
Instead she chose aspects of living or dead people, then combined them.
Other sources named for Ladislaw include Shelley, Chatterton, many
characters from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, figures in Raphael’s frescoes,
and, possibly, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Andrew Thompson). Morris’s
contribution to the Burne-Jones plot as encoded in Middlemarch
establishes his importance as one original for an important composite
character at the same time it creates a new way of reading of his own
courtly love poetry.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 15:55:16 -0500
From: Kathleen McCormack <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: CFP: New Developments in Pre-Raphaelite Poetry (3/15/04;
MLA '04)
I have absolutely no idea how this happened, but my regret is
profound.
Kathleen
Kathleen McCormack wrote:
> Dear Dr Tobin,
>
> Please consider the paper described in the following proposal for
> reading at the 2004 MLA session on "New Developments in
> Pre-Raphaelite Poetry." It draws on a small part of my research
> for a book-length script now under consideration at a major university
> press which in several ways strengthens the connections between
> George Eliot and the Pre-Raphaelites.
>
> Thanks for reading and considering my work.
>
> Yours truly,
> Kathleen McCormack
>
> Middlemarch:
> Reading George Eliot Reading William Morris
>
> In 1868, while George Eliot was composing Middlemarch, two experiences
> helped contribute to the process. She received Georgiana Burne-Jones’s
> confidences about her marital problems while on a holiday arranged
> specifically for that purpose in Yorkshire, and she read William
> Morris’s The Earthly Paradise.
>
> The places where George Eliot and G. Burne-Jones met and the
> circumstances of the marriage, together with George Eliot’s creative
> methods in general, indicate that she composed parts of Middlemarch
> (and, later, Daniel Deronda) to encode her responses to Edward
> Burne-Jones’s refusal to end his relationship with Maria Zambaco.
> Characters, settings, and plots in the novel convey George Eliot’s
> opinion of the husband’s actions by dignifying and celebrating his
> wife’s attractions and by warning about the deadly potential of his
> mistress.
>
> Indeed Middlemarch also warns about competitors for neglected
> affections, a warning based on Morris’s feelings for his friend’s
> betrayed wife (Penelope Fitzgerald). Morris shares with Will Ladislaw
> (who takes a similar interest in Dorothea), his given name; his mop of
> curly hair; his assumption of a courtly love role; his marked artistic
> inclinations; an interest in medievalism; a fondness for an
> undervalued wife; and nascent political tendencies. Like Ladislaw, who
> composes his own poem about the unattainability of Dorothea, Morris
> wrote courtly love poems.
>
> George Eliot’s inclusion of this character not only creates a new
> reading of Middlemarch, but also an entirely novel way of reading
> Morris and his work, specifically as Middlemarch subtext. My project
> develops partly by ascertaining the extent to which Ladilsaw’s poem
> about Dorothea resembles Morris’s poetry, what links she establishes
> with Morris’s work through multiple allusions to Chaucer, and the
> extent to which she draws on The Earthly Paradise as a parallel text.
>
> George Eliot never based the characters in her novels on a single
> model. Instead she chose aspects of living or dead people, then
> combined them. Other sources named for Ladislaw include Shelley,
> Chatterton, many characters from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, figures in
> Raphael’s frescoes, and, possibly, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Andrew
> Thompson). Morris’s contribution to the Burne-Jones plot as encoded in
> Middlemarch establishes his importance as one original for an
> important composite character at the same time it creates a new way of
> reading of his own courtly love poetry.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 14:30:25 -0800
From: "Peter H. Wood" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Injuries from tight-lacing
My apologies to the List for giving incorrect initials to Mesdames
E.
OE. Somerville and Martin Ross.
As to the deformation of one lady's rib-cage; it shows clearly in
the
(nude) photograph taken whilst they were bathing off the coast in
Southern ireland near their home.
I would not expect either of them to have suffered from any major
respiratory diseases when young, as the biography records them as
dancing a "long-chain mazurka" down the road from their family house to
the village.
However, the photograph is there for all to see. I am sorry that I
am
compelled to rely on a thirty-year-old memory for details thereof. Peter
Wood
<[log in to unmask]>
------------------------------
End of VICTORIA Digest - 3 Mar 2004 to 4 Mar 2004 (#2004-65)
************************************************************
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