twelve

oh dear. the neglect has started already- such a shame, in a blog so young. ANYWAY. look forward, not back, right? right? am i right? i'm right, right? right?

right.

this week i am reading about education and the enlightenment, a subject brimburstingfull of the (now) amusing views of stuffy old misogynist men on female reading. take John Bennett, for example, in the moral and instructional programme he addressed to his niece, Lucy:

'Plays, operas, masquerades, and all other fashionable pleasures have not half so much danger to young people, as the reading of these books.'

(folks, he's talking about novels. EVIL, CORRUPTING, SEDUCTIVE, IMMORAL NOVELS. consider yourself warned, and stay away from the bookshop, unless it's one that only stocks bibles, and knitting patterns.)

And it's not the young people in general he is worried about; no, he is in pure paternalistic, save-the-fragile-girls SUPERMAN mode, asserting that reading is particularly damaging because girls can do it 'in private, without any censure, and the poison operates more forcibly, because unperceived'.

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION TO THIS MORAL CRISIS, JOHN??

oh, i see, educate girls at home, where they can be under the 'immediate inspection' of their parents at all hours, and have their daytimes 'strictly arranged'. Good.




i read somewhere, a very long time ago, that comedy is often tragedy from a distance (i think it was in a paula danziger book. what, they had loads of well good moral messages). two hundred years is a good amount of distance, it seems.