Philobiblon

Having finished Margaret Oliphant’s Hester (1883), I can’t but be amazed by its clear feminist stance – at least in its assertion of the possibility of the single life for women, and its clear understandings of the social position that many found themselves in.

“That would have been better surely – to be independent,” Hester said.
[Emma replies]”In some ways. To have a paid salary would be very nice – but it hurts a girl’s chance.” [by which she means opportunity to marry – and what happens to this entirely practical Emma in terms of marriage – she marries a fleeing scoundrel and fraudster, who has asked her on a whim, might be said to be a reflection of the author’s view of her approach.] (p140)

On the question of a possible marriage:

“This was and generally is the great difference between the man and woman in such a controversy; until he had spoken, it was a shame to her that she should ask herself did he intend to speak; but Edward felt no shame if ever the idea crossed his mind that he might be mistaken in supposing she loved him.” (p. 201)

I can also only admire Oliphant, who published more than 120 books between 1849 and 1897. And for someone working at that pace – in pen and ink – she does write well. An Edinburgh Review critic in 1899, that “Mrs. Oliphant had gifts denied to Trollope; she had eloquence, charm of style, grace and ease where he is heavy and clumsy.”

One article (PDF) suggests she was:

“In her ambivalent and shifting position on women’Â’s rights she could be seen as a representative of the older generation of ‘respectable’” Victorian middle-class women who, as a result of personal experience, became more sympathetic to some of the aims of the women’s movement as the century came to a close, while clinging to the strict moral code of an earlier age and remaining firmly opposed to the sexual liberalism of the fin de siecle.

But in its assertion of a professional, single life, – this article sets out the nature of the three-volume novel and the way it worked economically with circulating libraries. I’m imagining say a milliner’s daughter in a humble middle-class suburb of London, or a prosperous farmer’s daughter say, reading their library volume and getting all sorts of ideas of which their mother and father would not approve.

(And it has an interesting view of the 1880s.)

Her writing is accessible – give it a go!

I was peering into my rubbish bag this evening, wondering how I could further reduce its bulk. (I was reading somewhere that each household should only produce one small bag a week, and I’m nowhere near that, despite recycling all glass, tin cans, paper, plastic bottles, non-printed cardboard and vegetable scraps.)

The main remaining problems are glossy-printed cardboard (which the worm farm on the balcony can’t handle – although they munch through egg cartons and similar with glee) and, the biggest bulk, Tetra Paks.

Now the glossy printed cardboard could, I believe, technically be recycled by taking it to the one depot in the whole of the Borough of Camden, somewhere near Kentish Town. Fine in theory, but not entirely practical when my method of transport is bicycle.

But the Tetra Paks are the main problem. I suppose if I were really dedicated I could stop getting fruit juice that way and buy a juicer, but even if I did that the milk and soy milk cartons would remain. So why aren’t the Tetra Paks recycled? I know it is possible, since I saw a bin for them when last on holiday in France. (In Biarritz.)

Researching around the subject, I found that one think-tank suggests that a lot of the problem in the UK is the government’s weight-based targets for councils.

In the UK, only 2% of the kind of liquid cartons produced by Tetra Pak are recycled, while the European average is 30%.

In fact there is only one recycling plant in the UK, in Fife in Scotland. Not what you’d call central. (They are typically 75% paper, 20% polyethylene and 5% aluminium foil – so the paper at least should be quite easy to recycle.)

At least according to the manufacturer, there are soon going to be a lot more of these packs around.

And there are potential environmental benefits, when you think about it – much less weight to cart around than glass. On wine Tetra Paks, a report says:

Tetra Pak … reduces packaging waste by 93% compared to recycling glass, and costs 83% less to recycle than glass. Its lower weight saves fuel in transport, and whereas a standard bottle adds 90% to the total weight of the item, the Tetra Pak adds 4%.

So it really is time that this recycling issue was addressed.

(While researching this I came across a potentially useful website. Plug in your UK postcode, and it will list the nearest recycling sites for various objects and substances.)

A seriously muddled story from The Sunday Times starts talking about family history, and examples of researchers who have found their families had much higher status in the past. Only the ST (and maybe the Telegraph), could have found this a surprise, but nonetheless some of the examples are interesting.

The story then meanders on to talk about downward social mobility today. It strikes me that it is less common, in general. Beyond a few high profile cases – a former Telegraph proprietor comes to mind – the Victorian pattern of “total ruin” is not relevant. That’s partly because better financial regulation (and legal remedies) mean people are far less likely to be wiped out by fraud/mismanagement today, and also because if the younger members of a family have, or are on the way to, professional qualifications, these will more easily enable them to rebuild the family fortunes, or ensure that social status at least is not lost.

But if you have less downward mobility, presumably that also means you have less upward mobility?

In Science, via, The Observer an account of how the study of mythology is helping to identify and highlight the risk of natural disasters. There’s a fascinating bit of detective work, linking Native American knowledge and Japanese records that dates a massive earthquake and tsunami in 1700.

Another example … is from Patrick Nunn, of Fiji in the South Pacific. His studies of volcanoes on the Fijian island of Kadavu indicated they had not been active for tens of thousands of years. ‘Then I heard legends of recent eruptions,’ he told The Observer. ‘I thought them unlikely. When a road was cut there in 2002, I found there had been a volcanic eruption long after it had been occupied by humans. … Now, Nunn is working for the French government to compile tales that might pinpoint Pacific islands where scientists should look for warnings of earthquakes, volcanoes and catastrophic landslides.

At the start of On Ego at the Soho Theatre, the audience treated to a mini-lecture on the workings of the brain and the nature of consciousness, complete with slideshow, albeit a rather flasher one to be found in any university, and without (mercifully) a Powerpoint list in sight. It is delivered byAlex (Elliot Levey) who looks the classic young lecturer, from his not-quite-matching-brown corduroy “uniform” to his anxious, eager-to-please smile and over-rehearsed jokes.

And his subject is interesting stuff, enlivened by a direction that must read something like “brain called Richard, enters stage left”. We learn that in “bundle theory”:

“Each life is just a long series of interconnected sensations and thoughts. And the mental processes underlying our sense of self- feelings, thoughts, memories – are scattered through different zones of the brain. There is no special points of convergence. No central core. We come together in a work of fiction. Our brain is a story-telling machine. And the ‘self’ is the story.”

But it is just at the point when the audience starts to shift on their buttocks, wondering “is this all?”, when the tone suddenly changes. You are asked: ‘If you believe this theory, would you mind being teleported, which involves the complete destruction of our current body, and its perfect recreation at the destination point?’ Alex is going to show that he does believe his own lecture by demonstrating. READ MORE

My 19th-century blogger Miss Williams Wynn is today less than impressed with the performance of an improvisatore. Not a term with which I was previously familiar – although the general intent is clear enough – it seems the audience gave him subjects for verses, which he had to make up on the spot. (Doesn’t rap music sometimes do something similar today?)

I discovered Coleridge wrote on the subject and it may have been a particularly Italian tradition.

Walking in to the latest major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, you are greeted by the cool, self-possessed gaze of Sofonisba Anguissola, the artist and the subject. She has taken for herself the role of St Luke the evangelist in painting the “first” portrait of the Virgin Mary. Then you look at the caption, and find this was painted in 1556.

It is not just the quality of the work here that surprises, but that a woman should be granted such a prominent place, so early. But as you proceed through Self Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary, at every point it is the female artists who stand out. Of the 56 diverse paintings here, a quarter are by women – a surprisingly large percentage for a show covering such a time frame.

The curators suggest that the self-portrait particularly appealed to women artists because they were compensating for their lack of access to models, and taking one of the few avenues available to them for self-promotion. Both statements are undoubtedly true, but it also seems that these factors were not so great a disadvantages as they might seem, at least in the specialist area of the self portrait. The women, being forced to look inward, to analyse and argue for their professional status, produced powerful paintings that have a lot to say. Read more