#see this is one reason I love studying the Victorian era (besides hoarding their detritus like a dragon I mean what)

[marzipanandminutiae]

quotes by Victorians about the 1920s view of their generation's women

"We are frequently told that the Victorian woman...generally behaved like a pampered and neurotic infant. This is all moonshine. I do not think that I ever saw a woman faint before I came to London in 1869, and not often after then...they enjoyed a hearty laugh, and a good many of them a contest of wits with any man." -Nineteenth Century, a Monthly Review, 1927 (written by a man born in 1850)

"What queer ideas the girl of 1929 has about the Victorian period- they are not a bit true...Marriage was by no means the end and aim of our existence. Oxford and Cambridge claimed quite a few of us after school days were over. We had great ideas about 'life' and what it all might mean to us." -St. Petersburg Times, 1929 (written by a woman born in 1853)

"True, debutantes were chaperoned at balls. But that fact did not prevent them from dancing as frequently as they chose with their favorite partners. The idea that girls in the Victorian era spent their days sewing seams and practicing scales is another fallacy." -Gettysburg Times, July 1, 1927 (quote from the Dowager Lady Raglan, Ethel Jemima Somerset, who lived from 1857 to 1940)

#history #when they were still alive to defend themselves #maybe- much as I rag on modern historical fiction -we've gotten a bit closer to the truth than our grandparents did #see this is one reason I love studying the Victorian era (besides hoarding their detritus like a dragon I mean what) #it just is One Of The Eras Of All Time in pop culture #and it means so much to so many people that getting to the real human bottom of it fascinates me #spoiler: it boils down to 'people were people and always have been'