… whether you like it or not.

I have been reading about the “superfluous daughters” in early modern Italy who were, with varying degrees of force, pushed into nunneries.

Unsurprisingly, there’s little detail about the process or the fate of the women, so it is said the best account is the story in Allessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi, which was inspired by the life of Marianna de Leyva, known as “the nun of Monza” (Monza being a city near Milan).

After eight years of education in a convent she writes to her father saying she does not want to be a nun. Taken home, she is held in virtual solitary confinement and allowed not the smallest of pleasures. Finally she gives in and is whisked back to the convent:

“I am here,” began Gertrude, but on the point of offering the words that were to have almost irrevocably sealed her fate, she hesitated for a moment and fixed her eyes on the crowd in front of her. She saw, in that moment, one of her companions, who was watching her with an air of compassion mixed with maliciousness, and seemed to be saying, “Ah, the clever one has fallen into the trap!” That sight, reawakening with even more force in her soul all the old feelings, restored a little of her old courage and she was already searching for any answer other than the one dictated to her when, raising her eyes to her father’s face, as if to tests her strength, she saw such sinster anxiety, such threatening impatience that prompted by fear, with the same readiness with which she would have taken flight before a dreadful object, she continued, “I am here asking to be admitted to take the habit in this convent where I was so lovingly raised.”

Later, she took a lover and murdered a servant who threatened to expose her. There’s been at least one movie made of her story – it is described as “nunsploitation”, so I doubt it has much value.

The text, described as “the first modern Italian novel” is available in Penguin classics, and I note from Amazon that one of its “statistically improbably phrases” is “poor innocent girl”, which isn’t exactly resassuring as to its value as an account.

Even Google scholar doesn’t throw up anything – sounds like a topic ripe for re-exploration.

This from Musical Voices of Early Modern Women: Many-Headed Melodies, T. Lamay (ed) Ashgate, 2005, “The Good Mother, the Reluctant Daughter , and the Convent,: A Case of Musical Persuasion, Colleen Reardon, pp. 271-286.

Just learnt via the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s of a useful website through which you can fax your political representatives.

Write to them will, after you have supplied your postcode, tell you not only your MP, but also your MEPs, local councillors, etc. You can then write a message for the one of your choice, which will be faxed to them (which I suspect might have more impact, still, than an email).

My message was in support of the following early day motion:
EDM 146 – Road Traffic Emissions first put down on 19th May 2005 by Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat)

That this House notes the alarming 83 per cent increase in road traffic between 1980 and 2004 and more than a 50 per cent. increase in associated carbon dioxide emissions over the same period with road transport now accounting for 18 per cent of total UK greenhouse gas emissions and rising; further notes with regret that the UK car industry has shown the poorest rate in Europe in improving emissions of new cars with the Institute for European Environmental Policy reporting new UK cars among the highest average carbon dioxide emitters and research by the Energy Savings Trust demonstrating emissions from new UK cars now actually increasing for private car purchases; acknowledges Department for Transport research showing two-thirds of people understand that transport emissions are a major contributor to climate change; and urges the Government now to take firm steps to encourage consumers to consider environmental performance in car purchasing decisions through reform of the Vehicle Excise Duty better to reflect associated vehicle emissions.

My message said:

As a cyclist and pedestrian (and occasional driver of small cars) I find the proliferation of these monsters on our streets horrifying and terrifying, and as a citizen of the earth their contribution to greenhouse gas emmissions utterly unjustifiable.

Banning them would probably be impractical; pricing them off the road is eminently sensible.

A postscript to my post on US treatment of North Korea yesterday.

In a review of The State of Africa: The First Fifty Years of Independence by Martin Meredith in the Financial Times (their Saturday magazine book review section is almost uniformly excellent), Paul Nugent writes:

“Some of of anecdotes are priceless. One of my favourites is the story of Richard Nixon flattering Mobutu in 1970: ‘I find in studying your administration that you not only have a balanced budget but a favourable balance of trade and I would like to know your secret before meeting with the cabinet.'”
(Free registration may be required for the FT.)

If Mobutu is before your time, see here for why this is so sickening, or indeed look at the state of Congo today, courtesy of the CIA, with an estimated per capita GDP of $700.

Well you’ve only got to answer one question on this one, and hey, I like the result; it might even be described as partially accurate…

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant. Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle. You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs. For you, comfort and calm are very important. You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection. You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

Bruce Cumings North Korea presents a compelling picture of the Stalinist state, as I said yesterday, but it also presents a revealing, and frequently terrifying, picture of the world’s rogue superpower.

Cumings says: “It was the Korean War, not Greece or Turkey or the Marshall Plan or Vietnam, that inaugurated historically unprecedented defense budgets (the budget quadrupled from June to December 1950, from $13 billion to $54 billion, or more than $500 billion in current dollars) and built the national security state at home and a far-flung archipelago of military base abroad, that transformed a limited containment doctrine into a global crusade, and that ignited McCarthyism just as it seemed to ” fizzle, thereby giving the Cold War its long run. (p. 8)

Now you might say that Cumings is making special pleading for his pet subject, but that budget figure is telling.

Eight years after that budget jump, Cuming says, the US brought nukes to South Korea “in spite of the 1953 armistice agreement that prohibited the introduction of qualitatively new weaponry … primarily to stabilize the volatile civil war” (to stop the South attacking the North).

If you suffer from nightmares you might not want to read the next bit …

There were 280mm nuclear cannons and “Honest John nuclear-tipped missiles” and a year later air-borne “Matador cruise missiles”. Later atomic demolition mines, which weighed 60 pounds but had the same power as the Hiroshima bomb, were added. They were moved around in Jeeps, helicopters and carried in backpacks!!! “That one of them might stray across the DMZ during a training exercise … and give Pyongyang an atomic bomb was a constant possibility.”

“In January 1968 the North Koreans seized the American spy ship Pueblo, capturing the crew and keeping it in prison for 11 months. The initial reaction of decision makers was to drop a nuclear weapon on Pyongyang.”! (p. 53)

Since the weapons were so close to the North, there was a “use it or lose it” mentality. “For decades … the US planned to use tactical and battlefield nuclear weapons in the very early stages of a new Korean conflict, the usual scenario being … within one hour of the outbreak of war”. (p.54)

So we should perhaps most thank Kim Il Sung for the fact there has not been any use of nuclear weapons since WW2. (And you can understand why the regime was, and is, so keen to have nukes of its own.)

But there is credit on the US side – in 1991 President Bush (the older – dread to think what the younger might do with these at hand) “announced that he was withdrawing all tactical and battlefield nuclear weapons on a worldwide basis, destroying them or putting them into storage”. (p.55) But as Cumings says, from the NK view, US submarines can still sail right up to their coast.

Cumings sums up the North as “a small, Third World, postcolonial nation that has been gravely wounded, first by 40 years of Japanese colonialism and then by another 60 years of national division and war, and that is deeply insecure, threatened by the world around it”. (p.151)

It is, for me, a convincing portrait.

* The British Library believes that by 2020, 90 per cent of publications will be available digitally, and only 50 per cent in print. That’s a very different world and, I think, an exciting one. (It made me think of the first time I found an academic journal on a CD – you could search the whole text, for any word: it was astounding, and yes I know I’m dating myself!)

I was reading somewhere about people who have two (or more) computers running on their desk at the one time. I’ve done it a few times at work when things were really desperate, and I’m starting to think that would be very handy at home. (Luxury, yes, but it would I think improve your productivity. I know you can flick between screens with one computer, but it is not quite the same as looking at things in parallel.)

* This sounds, to this militarily inexpert view, a very informative analysis of the increasing sophistication of the Iraq insurgency by The Yorkshire Ranter. Then this Salon piece confirms the impression of increasing sophistication of the insurgency, in its account of the attack that filled three female Marines. Its analysis of the role of women in the US military in Iraq is hardly deep, but I thought one quote from a male marine aged 20 on his third tour of duty is interesting in suggesting genuine grass-roots acceptance of the women’s involvement in the front line.

More on the technological notes: I see that Salon is providing Technorati links to blogs that are linking to its articles: now that’s what I call convergence.

* Japundit is exploring the (contradictory) accounts of the past of female sumo wrestling, and plans for its revival. (Via the excellent new History Carnvial XI on Siris.)

* The Telegraph reviews what sounds like two fascinating books on the fall of the Roman Empire. I’m particularly taken with the exploration of what happened after The End.

PS. I have to add, you REALLY don’t miss this commentary on Ascot hats. If you don’t laugh, you should check to see if you have a pulse.