Category: Frivolity

Fun posts

If my daughter had been born 200 years earlier…

Updated on September 20, 2013 by susanna

Last week Mr Fraser and I grounded our nine-year-old daughter, Miss Fraser, from all her electronic devices–her regular Kindle, her Fire, her DS, her computer, and the TV. She’s taking her electronics fast pretty hard. At one point I reminded her that when I was her age, I didn’t have any electronics except a TV which only got six or seven channels, two of them extremely fuzzy, and yet I entertained myself just fine with books, toys, and paper and pencils/crayons. All of which she has plenty of. “But you were used to it!” she wailed.

She’s adjusting. She’s been digging out toys she got for Christmas or her birthday that she’d barely touched, and she follows me around the kitchen wanting to help, but bored by the simplicity of my typical weeknight cuisine. While I’m just trying to get pasta or breakfast-for-dinner to the table, she’s trying to make it a round of Chopped or Iron Chef. Which might be fun–on a weekend when I have more time.

But it got me thinking what her childhood would’ve been like if she’d been born in 1804 instead of 2004. Setting aside for the moment the fact she’d probably be motherless (since I had complications of late pregnancy and labor and delivery that were no big deal in the 21st century but would’ve been dire back then), her world would look very different. She wouldn’t have My Little Pony figurines, she’d have an actual pony. (Assuming of course that Regency Mr Fraser and I were at least genteel and could afford to keep horses.)

Horsie!

(Yes, yes, I know, that’s a horse, not a pony. But isn’t it pretty? Horsie!)

She wouldn’t be able to read about Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter, or Firestar the warrior cat, but she might enjoy Charles Perrault’s fairy tales. Or, given that we are Frasers (it’s a pen name, but one chosen from my family tree), she might find The Scottish Chiefs more to her taste than anything else available in 1813.

And while I suppose the Regency versions of me and Mr Fraser would’ve felt obliged to restrain our daughter’s tomboyish tendencies, I’m sure she would’ve angled for toy soldiers instead of dolls.

As much as I love history, the only thing I envy about Regency Miss Fraser’s childhood is the pony.

What about you? What are your favorite toys, or your kids’ favorites? And what would you have played with 200 years ago?

Posted in Frivolity, Regency | Tagged childhood, Susanna Fraser, toys | 9 Replies

Pride and Prejudice – A Victorian Soap Opera???

Updated on September 15, 2013 by Diane Gaston

I’m continuing Myretta’s Jane Austen theme today.

The Christian Science Monitor just published an article on the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, coinciding with Bath’s annual Jane Austen Festival. The title of the article is “Victorian-era soap opera turns 200: Pride and Prejudice still resonates today.”

Doesn’t that raise your hackles?

My goodness! First to call the book Victorian-era?

One could argue whether the book was Regency, because it was published in 1813, during the Regency, or whether it was Georgian, since Austen first wrote it in 1797, but it is lightyears from being Victorian in time-period and story! One wonders whether the journalist (or title writer) ever thought to check his research on that matter? Ironically, attached to the article is a a quiz about the United Kingdom (more on that later). I suspect the writers would not score well.

Then to call Pride and Prejudice a soap opera? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The article compares the popularity of Downton Abbey to Pride and Prejudice. Now, I love Downton Abbey, but it is more a soap opera than Pride and Prejudice ever could be. Wikipedia defines a soap opera as: a serial drama, on television or radio, that features multiple related story lines dealing with the lives of multiple characters. The stories in these series typically focus heavily on emotional relationships to the point of melodrama.

Pride and Prejudice isn’t a series. True, the book has multiple characters with multiple story lines and is heavily focused on emotional relationships, but never never to the point of melodrama! Austen did not write melodrama. She wrote with a keen observation, wisdom, and wit about people, about their strengths and weaknesses, about how they could change and grow-through love.

What’s more, Pride and Prejudice is considered one of the greatest books in literature. It regularly appears on lists of the greatest books of all time (except on one list I read yesterday and couldn’t find today to provide a link. And this list of 100 Must Read Books for Men- only one woman author there, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird). Consider this quote from Anna Quindlen:

Pride and Prejudice is also about that thing that all great novels consider, the search for self. And it is the first great novel to teach us that that search is as surely undertaken in the drawing room making small talk as in the pursuit of a great white whale or the public punishment of adultery. (from Wikipedia)

Other than that, the article is pretty decent with some good observations from people who have the expertise to speak knowledgeably about the book.

It also includes a fun quiz – How Well Do You Know Pride and Prejudice? I scored only 80% mostly because I didn’t know enough about the film adaptations of the book. And I guessed Lizzie’s age wrong.

The article also links to another quiz – Keep calm and answer on: Take our United Kingdom quiz. I scored 80% on this one, too, mostly because I know Regency history, but not much else!

Take the quizzes and tell us how you do!

Do you think Pride and Prejudice is a soap opera?

Posted in Frivolity, Jane Austen, Reading | Tagged Anna Quindlen, Christian Science Monitor, Jane Austen, Jane Austen Festival, Pride and Prejudice, quiz, United Kingdom | 13 Replies

Me & Dennis–a very close relationship

Updated on September 5, 2013 by Janet Mullany

I want to share with you all some news.

Dennis and I are together again.

Yes, Dennis the kneebrace.

We have been on and off since I indulged in some extreme gardening a few years ago. Having fallen flat on my back while ripping up English ivy, it was–oh my gosh, it was like Marianne and Willoughby in better weather. With his assistance I could stand and he flung me onto the back of his stallion and rode with me back to safety, me nestled in the comfort of his warm cloak, inhaling his masculine woodsy scent of lime and tobacco and beer and all that. Well, sort of. I’m a bit nervous of sniffing Dennis after the very hot weather where you sweat in strange places, like the back of the knee.

And since then, he has answered my call. Except for the time he didn’t and I fell into a decline. I decided then I’d go with the first substitute I met, and in the pharmacy I met a sneering billionaire kneebrace who wanted to strap me up good and proper and restrain me in fifty shades of whatever. Consequently I now have an Upstairs Dennis and a Downstairs Dennis.

Most recently we took a fabulous trip to San Francisco and together we strode through the city and sat around for hours in coffee shops writing. I’m not even sure my lovely hosts were aware that I brought Dennis and not my husband. We were very discreet.

And after that trip, things sort of cooled off.

But this morning, feeling the pangs of unrequited love (pangs at any rate), I took Upstairs Dennis out of the dirty laundry basket, reveling in the clean masculine smell of his sweat (or more likely my own) and got it on.

Posted in Anything but writing, Frivolity, Jane Austen | Tagged Dennis the kneebrace, generally silly stuff | 6 Replies

Classics as Regencies…

Updated on August 28, 2013 by Janet Mullany

Rakish Lord Pooh destroys hearts and reputations with his honeyed words of seduction…

Returning from the Peninsula, Captain Ahab sees the statuesque woman dressed in white across a crowded ballroom. She must be his…at any cost.

She shocks the ton…driven by wild passion, Lady Constance Chatterley allows a male servant to remove her gloves.

Lady O goes beyond the green baize door and gets quite an education!

To the envy of his fellow collectors of antiquities, Viscount Spade adds another priceless figurine to his collection.

Seated in the famous bow window of the Cannery Row Club, the languid dandies of the ton wager on the outcome of a match between a seamstress and the local doctor.

Is his heart touched at last? Romance is in the air when the enigmatic recluse the Duke of Badger holds a houseparty at Wildwoods Manor in this sparkling Christmas regency–but then two mysterious strangers arrive.

Yes, yes, I will, yes…Lord and Lady Bloom ignite Dublin society.

Clad in her one of trademark diaphanous white gowns, Miss Darling must choose between a host of young suitors led by the boyishly handsome Lord Pan or a fascinating pirate with a dark past for whom time is running out…

OK, your turn.

Posted in Frivolity | Tagged generally silly stuff | 6 Replies

Dolls of the World

Updated on August 20, 2013 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

It’s contest time at my Amanda Carmack website! Sign up for my newsletter list for the chance to win an advance copy of Murder at Hatfield House and an Elizabethan Barbie to help you read it!! (My site is here, just click on the Contest Page) I’ve gotten so many emails from people with their own favorite childhood doll stories, so I thought I would take a quick look at the history of dolls here….

Dolls have been around as long as human civilization. Though no prehistorical dolls have been found (that I could discover in my research, anyway), but there is a fragment of an alabaster doll with movable arms from Babylonian times. In ancient Egypt, there were dolls made of flat pieces of wood, with hair made of strings of beads. There have also been pottery dolls found in graves from as far back as 2000 BC.

The ancient Greek and Roman graves of children have also yielded dolls, very lifelike ones of of wood, ivory, or wax, with movable limbs and sometimes little clothes of their own. I read a legend that sometimes when girls grew up and were considered too “old” for dolls, they donated them to the altars of domestic goddesses…

Renaissance and later in Europe saw a boom in the demand for dolls. Mothers of all social classes made rag dolls for their daughters, but the wealthier classes wanted fine dolls of wax or porcelain. There were “fashion dolls” for grown women to look at gowns, and girls played with very similar styles. In the early 1800s, composition (a mix of pulped wood or paper pressed into a mold, made a more affordable and durable alternative). In the Victorian age, every little girl wanted a French “bebe” (much like every girl wants an American Girl now!). They were among the first to depict a younger child rather than a grown lady, and her clothes were always very fashionable and elaborate. Bisque dolls made in Germany were similar, but cheaper.

The availability of plastics in the 1940s, and the development of vinyl dolls in the ’50s and ’60s revolutionized dolls, like my mom’s Chatty Cathy and Barbie (both of which were passed down to me! I played with Barbie, but CC sort of scared me, so she stayed in the closet)

My husband’s niece was given an American Girl Kit doll for her birthday, and at a family weekend a few weeks ago she carried the doll with her everywhere!! Her brothers were NOT allowed to touch the doll….

What was your favorite childhood doll story?? If you could have any doll now, what would it be? (and be sure and enter my drawing for your very own Elizabethan Barbie!)

Posted in Frivolity, Giveaways | 1 Reply