Home > Work > This Victorian Life: Modern Adventures in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Cooking, Fashion, and Technology
1 " The people we find truly anathema are the ones who reduce the past to caricature and distortit to fit their own bigoted stereotypes. We’ve gone to events that claimed to be historic fashionshows but turned out to be gaudy polyester parades with no shadow of reality behind them. Aswe heard our ancestors mocked and bigoted stereotypes presented as facts, we felt like we hadgone to an event advertised as an NAACP convention only to discover it was actually a minstrelshow featuring actors in blackface. Some so-called “living history” events really are that bigoted.When we object to history being degraded this way, the guilty parties shout that they are “justhaving fun.” What they are really doing is attacking a past that cannot defend itself. Perhapsthey are having fun, but it is the sort of fun a schoolyard brute has at the expense of a child whogoes home bruised and weeping. It’s time someone stood up for the past.I have always hated bullies. The instinct to attack difference can be seen in every socialspecies, but if humans truly desire to rise above barbarism, then we must cease acting like beasts.The human race may have been born in mud and ignorance, but we are blessed with mindssufficiently powerful to shape our behavior. Personal choices form the lives of individuals; thesum of all interactions determine the nature of societies.At present, it is politically fashionable in America to tolerate limited diversity based aroundrace, religion, and sexual orientation, yet following a trend does not equate with being trulyopen-minded. There are people who proudly proclaim they support women’s rights, yet have anappallingly limited definition of what those rights entail. (Currently, fashionable privileges arevoting, working outside the home, and easy divorce; some people would be dumbfounded at theidea that creating beautiful things, working inside the home, and marriage are equally desirablerights for many women.) In the eighteenth century, Voltaire declared, “I disagree with what yousay but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.”3 Many modern Americans seem to haveperverted this to, “I will fight to the death for your right to agree with what I say.”When we stand up for history, we are in our way standing up for all true diversity. When wequestion stereotypes and fight ignorance about the past, we force people to question ignorance ingeneral. "
― Sarah A. Chrisman , This Victorian Life: Modern Adventures in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Cooking, Fashion, and Technology
2 " By the time we got to the store on our pre-Independence Day shopping trip, I had counted no less than twenty-four deer actively engaged in demolishing people’s gardens. Twenty-four deer aligned along a walk of one mile! I pointed out to Gabriel that this was a rather ridiculous situation on our way to lay down hard-earned dollars for deer meat. However, we hadn’t even gotten to the punchline yet. When we went inside the store and found the venison, the back of the package was labeled PRODUCT OF NEW ZEALAND. Apparently modern Americans find it more palatable for their meat to have a seven-thousand-mile carbon footprint than to come from their own backyards. "
3 " I was nineteen at the time, and like any other besotted teenage girl, I was desperately eager to please the object of my affections. I didn’t argue the point, but set to work producing the desired loaf.The result was barely chewable when it emerged hot from the oven. By the time it cooled, it seemed significantly more resistant to fire, flood, or earthquakes than my dormitory’s concrete walls. After a brief discussion, Gabriel and I both decided that this rye-brick was more appropriate food for crows than for humans. I carried the slab to the balcony of my eighth-floor dormitory apartment, expecting that a fall from that height would smash it to crumbs.I peered over the edge to make sure no one was below me; I didn’t want to drop the hardened mass onto someone’s head and make a murderess of myself. After verifying that the concrete walkway below was clear, I dropped the rye-brick over the side of the balcony. Down, down, it plummeted—past the seventh floor, the sixth, the fifth … Nearly a hundred feet below, and traveling somewhere around eighty feet per second, the rye-brick finally hit the ground—and didn’t break.Despite an eight-story drop onto concrete, the rye-brick maintained its integrity. One of my roommates inspected the situation and expressed surprise that the stones of the walkway itself remained unscathed.I didn’t try making any wheat-free loaves for a while after that. "
4 " Many wild foods have their charms, but the dearest one to my heart - my favorite fruit in the whole world - is the thimbleberry. Imagine the sweetest strawberry you've ever tasted, crossed with the tartest raspberry you've ever eaten. Give in the texture of silk velvet and make it melt to sweet juice the moment it hints your tongue. Shape it like the age-old sewing accessory that gives the fruit its name, and make it just big enough to cup a dainty fingertip. That delicious jewel of a fruit is a thimbleberry. They're too fragile to ship and too perishable to store, so they are one of those few precious things in life that can't be commoditized, and for me they always symbolize the essence of grabbing joy while I can. When it rains in thimbleberry season, the delicate berries get so damp that even the gentlest pressure crushes them, so instead of bringing them home as mush, I lick each one of my fingers as soon as it is picked. These sweet berries are treasure beyond price... "
5 " The hard part is dealing with other people’s reactions. We live in a society that prides itself on diversity, yet has ironically narrow definitions of which types of diversity it will tolerate. People who would never dream of pulling their eyes into slants to make faces at Asians will point at me and give voice to the most ridiculous stereotypes imaginable of the nineteenth century. No politically correct American would dream of fondling a Muslim woman through her hijab, yet they’ll stride up and start groping my waist. I’ve even been in situations where people started screaming (literally screaming) at me for removing their hands from my body. People can display an appalling lack of compunction when encountering a lifestyle outside their narrow frame of tolerance. With the exception of a glancing reference to some of the hate mail we’ve received, I’ve refrained in this text from mentioning the vitriol we’re subjected to on a constant basis. This has primarily been a story of our home, our sanctuary from a hostile world. Here I tend our household gods and look for the angels in the details. The Victorians were fond of saying that home is our heaven; I will not allow the demons of ignorance to invade this sacred space. I "
