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What Empty Things Are These

What Empty Things Are These: Why Then, Why There?

November 1, 2018 Leave a Comment

Regal House Publishing author J.L. Crozier, author of What Empty Things “Why,’ so many ask me, ‘write about this period?’ That is to say, 1860, and London, no less. I’m not English, and honestly, I wasn’t around then.

But context is all. I do absolutely think that history can tell us much about ourselves, and my abiding impression of Victorians is that they are very, very familiar to us. We can see ourselves in them. Much, believe me, is explained about our times by looking at theirs.

Who the Victorians were – or at least, who they believed they were – was pretty well established by 1860. They had travelled far, metaphorically speaking,   from the Georgian period, when, frankly, life was a lot more laid-back for the moneyed classes. That was because these were mainly the titled, and society was not based so consciously on commerce. Their houses were outward-looking, with large windows and balconies. The sun shone in on apartments where rooms did not necessarily have established functions, where servants were just as likely to share sleeping quarters with their masters. They might, in fact, all end up after a late night snoring gently on a handy couch.

Victorians by 1860, however, lived in a very different society. The industrial and agrarian revolutions had changed many things. Never let it be forgotten that there were legions of vulnerable people destroyed by these revolutions (some of whom were transported to the penal colony of Australia, in punishment for attempting to establish some rights), but in the meantime town and cities became swollen with the newly and vastly expanded middle class. Life was suddenly much more urban in general, where time was no longer measured in seasons and harvests but by clocks, minutes and hours. People were more educated. Transportation – trains particularly – linked them and proved the means of carrying food and other stuffs from city to city. Newspapers and periodicals spread far and wide, of course, and, with newly educated markets and the means of reaching a far-flung audience. Discussion and commentary, poetry and literary works boomed.

Patterns were established to demonstrate that the finer people deserved their status: the family was headed by the patriarch (a little like God), and everybody else ranked beneath him. It was not only important that society be aware that these families were awash with money, but that (there was perhaps some guilt here) they were nonetheless good. The home itself reflected the sense that the Victorian family was a virtuous entity – nothing loose about the way they lived, no sir. The family (and this was a nuclear family) was the centre of everything, and so the house looked inward. No more balconies; many heavy curtains over the windows. Every room must have its designated function; servants would begin to have their own tiny bedchambers immediately below the roofline; as far as possible (and even though it might reduce the actual bedchamber to cupboard-size) those who could began to insist on adjoining changing rooms. Roles were strictly delineated. ‘Upstairs’ was not to mix with ‘Downstairs’; the lady of the house worked hard to do the right thing, symbolising the virtues of the family (and of herself) and displaying her home and family at their best.

Victorian parlor
The parlour, or front parlour, or drawing room was essentially meant to display the Victorian family at its ‘best’: its virtues, its taste and its success.

The front parlour or drawing room was the formal room of display, and she would also have a morning room.

Once again, however, this was a society where virtues were on display, but also concealed some dark contradictions.  People were conscious that appalling housing in the cities were a very bad look indeed, and they spoke about the need to clear whole areas of verminous and noisome habitations. They were not, however, so attracted by the idea that urban renewal – that is, replacement housing – might be a companion notion. And where the fortunes of many increased during this time, there were also many charlatans who would became obscenely wealthy through shonky schemes that ruined the more credulous investor. Railroads, real or fables, were a favorite ploy.

Interestingly, crinolines – that odd piece of underwear so identified with Victorian women – in themselves say a lot about the times. By 1860, for example, these were now made of hoops of fine steel, and were therefore far lighter and more comfortable to wear than the bent-wood and horsehair versions of a few years before. Thus, you could say, industry had improved the lot of women in general. But that’s not all that can be said about crinolines. Punch, the satirical periodical, had quite a lot to say, in fact. Crinolines enabled skirts to bell-out to some ridiculous dimensions, with which cartoonists had a lot of fun, and, since a crinoline meant that very few petticoats were now needed to create a really impressive width… ladies were very vulnerable to a high wind. Punch loved it.

The Perils of the Crinoline
A high wind was not a friend to a lady out for a stroll. Luckily, she was wearing underwear.

But there’s more. Crinolines meant, as I said, that a fine impression could be made with a much-reduced acreage of petticoats. Yards and yards of dress material advertised the status of the wearer (and her husband and father, perhaps more to the point), but the expense need not extend to the underwear. Victorian dress of 1860 was a bit of a shop-front, indeed. Except for the important point that a certain vulnerability in windy weather encouraged the rapid development of good, solid underwear – drawers and stockings, and so on. In my researches, I was surprised to learn that undies were not so common before the advent of Victorians and their crinolines.

Dress, being such an item of personal display, is a fine subject for those analysing any society. Really, it is. Victorians went through many versions of the dress that not only demonstrated how little a woman was required to do in the way of work (if they weren’t farm workers, servants or factory hands, of course), but that also displayed the status of their husbands or fathers. But, in addition, their dress – especially in 1860 – absolutely demonstrated how confused and contradictory was the prevailing attitude to women. Just look at it: the woman was covered from neck to toe, but her shape was almost grotesquely sexualised.

The Countess Castiglione
The Countess Castiglione used the crinoline to perfection as a display, not just of wealth – but also of an exaggerated and almost cartoonish sexuality.

This of course, is where the corset came in, as the companion-piece to the crinoline. (As a little aside, however, the corset in 1860, while it could be tugged very tight, was itself a part of a piece of trompe l’oeil: a good, wide crinoline could help give the impression of an hourglass.)

Not enormously surprising, then, that the bourgeoise in her finery was subject to the politics of the time. This seems a bit unfair, to me, since she and her dress were always in effect lived statements about her husband or her father, really. She herself owned nothing. However, John Ruskin, commentator of the time, was quite caustic about the ostentation implied by extremes of bourgeois female dress; and there arose at this time the Aesthetes and their ‘rational dress’, which did away with both corsetry and crinolines.

Jane Morris, née Burden, a Pre-Raphaelite model
Jane Morris, née Burden, was a Pre-Raphaelite model and muse whose face graced myriad paintings and drawings of the time. Here she is without corset or crinoline, wearing ‘rational’ dress in 1865.

These were political statements in themselves, absolutely, and a sign of revulsion at so much conspicuous consumption. But they were not necessarily a sign that women’s lot in particular was being seen as political – Ruskin was no feminist, and there was a lot of idealisation in artistic circles that really doesn’t suggest women were being seen as anything more that symbols. Just as the nouveau riche, bourgeois class saw them, really.

However, let it also be said that education was reaching women, too, to an unprecedented extent, and that there were some intellectual giants about, who were beginning to speak of the condition of women. John Stuart Mill was one such. Another, if less well-known, was Barbara Bodichon, feminist and member of the Langham Place Circle, which argued for dress reform. She had already written in 1850, after a walking holiday in which she and Mary Howitt opted for practicality and comfort, turfed their corsets and shortened their skirts:

 

Oh! Isn’t it jolly

To cast away folly

And cut all one’s clothes a peg shorter

(a good many pegs)

And rejoice in one’s legs

Like a free-minded Albion’s daughter.

(Wojtczak, date unknown)

Thus it is clear that in the midst of what was not, to tell the truth, a very liberated space for most women, there were the seeds of a very different set of views altogether. And of course, while not everyone was conscious of taking up anything like a feminist cause, the expansion of the middle classes and the proliferation of journals and literature meant that more women were being heard as writers, and occasionally as commentators. And women were increasingly characters in novels, as well, characters who were active and intelligent. Even children’s literature might sometimes recognise girls. Who could forget Alice in Wonderland or Alice Through the Looking Glass, both of the 1860s?

What Empty Things are These, a novel by Regal House Publishing author Judy CrozierAnd it struck me, while indulging my fascination for all things Victorian by writing a novel about this most interesting time (remember, 1860 was also the year after Darwin’s theory of evolution crashed onto the scene) that some intriguing questions could be asked. What, I mused, would happen if the patriarch of this most Victorian of households were to lose his hold on it? What if he and his domestic influence were to fade? What would change?

Adelaide encounters many things in my novel, in her search for a life that would have meaning for her once George, her comatose husband, finally passes on. But fundamental to all the changes she goes through are the alterations to the patterns of her own home, including all of the relationships under that roof.

—–00—–

For those interested in pursuing some of the themes mentioned above, my Master’s thesis: Beneath the carapace: virtue versus sexuality, and other contradictions behind meanings imposed on English female shape and clothing in the 1860s is available at my website: www.jlcrozier.com

Regal House Publishing author J.L. Crozier, author of What Empty Things Are TheseJL (Judy) Crozier’s early life was a sweep through war-torn South East Asia: Malaysia’s ‘Emergency’, Burma’s battles with hill tribes, and the war in Vietnam. In Saigon, by nine, Judy had read her way through the British Council Library, including Thackeray and Dickens. Home in Australia, she picked up journalism, politics, blues singing, home renovation, child-rearing, community work, writing and creative writing teaching, proof reading and editing, and her Master of Creative Writing. She now lives in France.

J.L. Crozier’s historical novel, What Empty Things Are These, is available from booksellers all over the world.

Filed Under: Literary Musings, Regal Authors, Regal House Titles Tagged With: Historical Fiction, J.L. Crozier, Victorian-era fashion, What Empty Things Are These

That’s My Story – J.L. Crozier

October 18, 2018 Leave a Comment

Thats My Story, Regal House Publishing author interviews

With what do you write? A computer? A pencil? A ballpoint/ biro? Rollerball? Quill and the blood of virgins (male or female is fine. We’re all about the equal opportunity at Regal)? A fountain pen (people who use a fountain pen get extra credit points)?

Regal House Publishing author J.L. Crozier, author of What Empty Things Are TheseI use a computer. One of the best things my mother ever did for me was pack me (and my older brother) off to Stott’s Business College in Melbourne for a summer course in typing. She’d gone there herself about forty years before, and I have to say the place did seem to hark back a bit. We had huge typewriters that were possibly 20 years old even in the 70s. Perhaps one of them still had my mother’s fingerprints on it. We all typed in rhythm – one-two-three, one-two-three – and we’d bring our finished paragraph up to the teacher to check. Any mistakes and we’d have to do it again. My brother, a post-graduate at the university at the time, kept making so many mistakes he began to cheat and not take his paragraph to be vetted. Then we’d begin to have a bit of a giggle, outraging the teacher who, it turned out, thought I was flirting with this boy. Ah, the 70s. Recall this ‘boy’ is and was six years older than me, but, hey, it must be the girl’s fault. Still, she blushed fiery red when she discovered our surname was the same.

But I digress. Nowadays, I type a good faster than I write in longhand and, anyhow, with a pen in hand I can lose the thread or totally forget the trenchant point I was trying to make, well before I get to the end of a sentence. Also, bless this technology that allows you to hone and hone and hone without making a total mess.

I do, however, keep endless copies. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I fantasize that historians will actually want to know about all of my rewrites. You know… how did JL Crozier arrive at her great art? What were her methods? What can we learn from her? So my folders are full of versions 1 to 25, not to mention 4.5 and so on. Once I was on the verge of mass deletions of versions 1-24 (and the rest), but then I thought there were some passages that could be copied and dropped into the newest version. So now I am too paranoid to lose anything… and, anyway, what of posterity? Can’t you just see the PhD student of 2045 ploughing through the gems of #1-24, noting them for the gratification of other students of deathless literature?

No?

Maybe I should just relax.

There’s fair bit of interest, scientific and otherwise, in the links between creativity and insanity. How crazy must someone be to be a good author?

What are you suggesting?? Well, you’re probably correct. I think the answer is ‘reasonably’, though then again we could just spend a lot of time with a brandy balloon in front of an open fire discussing what exactly is sanity anyway.

Personally, I think the line between the two is far from clean-cut, as is any demarcation between what we think we know of as ‘normal’ and any number of syndromes. The mind is a remarkably plastic thing, and the brain can build itself back together after incurring great trauma. What we understand about the world is so largely taught a university department-full of philosophers could not really tell where essential reality lies. We take rather a lot on trust, but then we have to balance that with a learned capacity to balance evidence and probabilities. There is always the possibility of further refinement to edge us closer to a ‘truth’, which is I guess why the current enthusiasm for fakery in media is so deeply destructive.

Still, back to the question. We’re none of us absolutely steady, and we wouldn’t want to be. Where would life be, if we had nothing to improve on? And as writers, we need to understand the unsettling effects of emotion and trauma. We need to understand instability, if we want to write characters. We need to recognize frailty and we need to empathize with it.

That’s how crazy we need to be to be authors. But add to that a need for obsessiveness. Otherwise we’d never finish.

Are you fluent in any other languages? If so, do you find that knowledge has any effect on your writing? Is it important for people to learn other languages? Why?

Regal House Publishing author J.L. Crozier, author of What Empty Things
J.L Crozier, 4th from the left, back row.

I’m fluent in French, which comes from a childhood in Vietnam in the 60s at a French convent in Saigon. I’m living in France now (the choice of country made, obviously, because I had a head start from my very distant youth), and relieved that much of ‘learning’ is more ‘remembering’. Though there are moments – think of the number of French phrases you think you know… in fact many of these are not translations at all. A French person would not know what you meant as you enthuse about your ensuite. It does not mean your own private bathroom in French. Honestly.

I’ve discovered that the French can take a long time to finish a letter, what with all the linguistic flourishes; I have a French friend who can devastate tradesmen with politeness until has absolutely won her point and they are begging to be allowed to make reparations. I’ve also discovered that many of the differences in language lie in nuance and that English and French speakers can each inadvertently find themselves being rude. I myself can find myself in the middle of a sentence without a paddle, if you see what I mean.

No, it doesn’t have an effect on my writing, but it will be interesting to see what happens if it is ever translated. And will I know what to look for as the author? Scary.

Look around myself in France and noting how many anglophones here don’t speak French, I would say yes, it’s important. But I think too that some people find learning a new language very difficult, especially when they’ve reached retirement age, and especially when the anglophone diaspora makes it so easy to avoid it. But what they miss is understanding a culture that’s represented by its language. Forever, those community.

Languages can’t be directly translated; there’s a culture behind them and a millennium of simile and metaphor. English is awash with ocean-going and naval references (e.g. ‘room to swing a cat’ – that’s a cat ‘o nine-tails); I understand northerners and Inuit have a bag-full of words for snow. There’s about a dozen words for ‘rain’ in Scotland. Sometimes something really isn’t translatable at all. You just need to know its background.

That’s the kind of thing we need to understand about language. Well, about people, really.

Regal House Publishing author J.L. Crozier, author of What Empty Things Are These

JL (Judy) Crozier’s early life was a sweep through war-torn South East Asia: Malaysia’s ‘Emergency’, Burma’s battles with hill tribes, and the war in Vietnam. In Saigon, by nine, Judy had read her way through the British Council Library, including Thackeray and Dickens. Home in Australia, she picked up journalism, politics, blues singing, home renovation, child-rearing, community work, writing and creative writing teaching, proof reading and editing, and her Master of Creative Writing. She now lives in France.

J.L. Crozier’s historical novel, What Empty Things Are These, is available from booksellers all over the world.

Filed Under: That's My Story Tagged With: J.L. Crozier, That's My Story, What Empty Things Are These

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