And so they invented Hysteria just for our foremothers

I experienced post fail this week. I guess the closer I get to finishing up the plotting side of my book, the further my head gets from non-fiction ways, and more into fiction. That's usually what happens. I've been reading a lot instead.

But here's a thing I thought worth posting. I was just catching up on Casa Pinka's blog <-- if you click that link it will lead you to the most excellent still life Junior Makes Toast. She posted a picture of one of this artist's paintings, and I had to go look up more and share with you. Her name is Kelly Reemsten.

The Hapless Romantic

Inconspicuous

Pardon the Interruption

Flower Girl

I don't have much to say. They just reminded me of that storyline from The Hours, of the housewife who abandons her family because otherwise she would kill herself from misery. And it reminds me of Mad Men, or rather the reason I can't watch it. What a suffocating life housewifery must have been for some women--depending on the women, depending on the circumstances. Just the idea that a husband is allowed to talk to his wife's psychologist about how her therapy is going makes me mental, I have to turn the channel.


I'm not saying Housewife is a bad job, but like every job, it's not for everyone. So when you take one job and hold it up as the ideal for one sex, and hold up one way of doing it as the ideal, and you don't even give that sex the control over how to do it and the resources for doing it... man... that has the potential for major psychic pain.


I felt the same thing when I watched the historical "reality" shows Edwardian Country House and Regency House Party. I love Regency romance novels, but the reality is women's lives were so circumscribed, so narrow, that if any of us were dropped through a time machine into the 1820s we'd go mad.