Further Victoriana

A cold, wet, bleak day in Cambridge, which I spent reading up on female immurement in the UL (that is, I was in the UL reading up on female immurement rather than reading up on women being walled up in the UL, although in a sense I myself was an example of the latter, the irony of which was not lost on me, oh no). I only thought of this idea the day I had to write the essay, but fortunately my supervisor is very much an ideas woman - I apologized for my essay being kind of short, and she just said "oh, as long as there's a lot *in it*, it's fine", and then gave me enough new reading to furnish a dissertation. So I was stuck today with "Little Dorrit", which will be very useful - I can see why academics like Dickens, he fits into arguments so neatly - but is so depressing you could just cry, all horrible funereal houses and people being born among swarms of flies in debtors' prisons. Then I followed it up with a study about single women in Victorian England, which made me feel very sorry for women in Victorian England, single or otherwise. I went home and self-medicated with crumpets and raspberry jam.

But at least it's all interesting (well, to me). Oddly enough, becoming immersed (immured, possibly) in the Victorian period doesn't make me feel like I'm lucky to not be Victorian and to be able to blog and drink and own property - well, it does, but what I seem to see is not the contrast so much as the continuity. Much of it really isn't very foreign. And I wonder if this is because a century and a bit actually isn't that long, or whether I'd feel the same way if I was working with the Medieval period.

I will now go and read another book about Victorian women, called "Suffer and be Still". Wooooo!