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Yay!! Today is my first day home with both of my kiddos. They make me happy to be a Mom.
I'm reading At Home by Bill Bryson, and in the section about the lives of Victorian children, he discusses some stories by Heinrich Hoffmann, designed to teach kids to obey their parents. Dwight, of course, was reading the one about the great tall tailor who cuts off the thumbs of little children who suck on them, but here is another:
"The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches"
But Pauline would not take advice.
She lit a match, it was so nice!
It crackled so, it burned so clear,-
Exactly like the picture here
She jumped for joy and ran about,
And was too pleased to put it out.
Now see! Oh see! What a dreadful thing
The fire has caught her apron string;
Her apron burns, her arms, her hair;
She burns all over, everywhere.
So she was burnt with all her clothes
And arms and hands, and eyes and nose;
Till she had nothing more to lose
Except her little scarlet shoes;
And nothing else but these was found
Among her ashes on the ground.
I found the whole section on Victorian childhood really horrifying.
I hope that story had illustrations.
Oh it did. I already took the book back to the library but it said something to the effect that it was accompanied by an illustration of a dismayed Pauline being engulfed in flames. And I guess the one with the tailor cutting off the thumbs was pretty bloody.
I found the whole section on Victorian childhood really horrifying.
It really made Oliver Twist look tame, didn't it? I couldn't help imagining my poor 3 year old twin brothers as chimney sweeps.
The basic effect of that book was to make me glad I was born roughly when I was. Just about any time before maybe WWI would have involved so much ickiness and uncertainty that I wouldn't have liked it, I don't think.
At work some coworkers and I played that game where you choose what historical era you would most want to travel back in time to and live in. I'm rethinking a lot of those choices.
Watching Mad Men has made me realize that I'm glad I wasn't raised in the suburbs in the 50's in 60's by Don and Betty Draper. Sure it isn't Victorian times, but it would still kinda suck. Those kids probably could have started a few wars of their own.