{"id":11117,"date":"2012-06-06T08:30:24","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T07:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=11117"},"modified":"2012-06-06T08:30:24","modified_gmt":"2012-06-06T07:30:24","slug":"review-history-for-girls-lucy-worsleys-harlots-heroines-housewives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2012\/06\/06\/review-history-for-girls-lucy-worsleys-harlots-heroines-housewives\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: History for Girls – Lucy Worsley’s Harlots Heroines & Housewives"},"content":{"rendered":"
It starts with an unfortunate throwaway statement. ‘This was an exciting
time to be a woman’ says Lucy Worsley as she introduces us to the
premise of
Harlots, Heroines & Housewives: A Seventeenth-Century History for Girls
<\/strong>(BBC4).<\/p>\n
Gee… yeah, I guess the 1300s were a pretty boring time to be a
woman. As for the 2000s… I’m so bored, like, all the time,
nowadays, just being a woman. This is the same kind of thinking that
underscores the title (which, BTW, is too long and therefore totally
un-hashtagable – who
does<\/em> that, in this day and age? Live tweeting, like, totally
ruined.). Said title also left me uncertain whether this was supposed to
be a history
for <\/em>girls about everyone, or a herstory<\/a>-style
history
of <\/em>girls for both boys and girls, or a kind of
disco-toilets-at-3am thing
for <\/em>girls
about <\/em>girls about how we’re all just the same
really, we all have the same heartaches and problems and
we’re all so modern why can’t we all get
along.<\/p>\n
I eventually settled on the latter, partly because I assume
the title is trying to reference that whole kind of
retro-Girls Own \/ Glorious Book for Girls type thing that I
really have no right to find intrinsically a bit obnoxious but
do anyway.<\/p>\n
Granted, men and women moved in different social circles
during this period, but I think all this is Worsley’s
first error: she considers men and women in isolation from
each other, rather than how they interact (unless, that, is,
they’re ‘interacting’ with the king’s
…sceptre). The sainted Amanda
Vickery <\/a>also writes about women in history, but her
series on the eighteenth-century home last year was far more
inclusive – and actually far more insightful – for
focusing on an arguably female-dominated
space<\/em> rather than on one 50% of society to the
exclusion of the other (which is, ironically, exactly the
kind of short-sightedness a series like this is trying to go
against).<\/p>\n The Man: Charles II<\/p><\/div>\n
Had the first episode of
History for Girls <\/strong>– ‘At
Court’ – looked simultaneously at
king’s mistresses, king’s courtiers and
king’s womanizing major poet, I think Lucy W would
have been onto a winner – and it would have told
us a lot about women in the period. Instead, there is no
mention of the Earl of Rochester and his notoriously rakish
companions <\/a>beyond a bit of giggling at the
cast-list for
Sodom<\/strong> (King Bolloxinian and Cuntigratia,
his queen; Clytoris, the maid of honour, &c) in
the first episode.<\/p>\n
The second episode does look at marriage<\/a>,
and the increased female freedom to choose
one’s own husband in evidence during this
period; however, there’s nothing about how
that freedom might come with certain societal
obligations to choose a sober and sensible fellow to
espouse. Given that this was the age of the
‘King
of Bling<\/a>‘, whose court frequently
witnessed happenings such as the one in the local
tavern described by Pepys – Sir Charles
Sedley, in the company of a group of friends,
‘took a glass of wine and washed his prick in
it, and then drank it off’ in front of a large
crowd – it seems silly to ignore the potential
implications for women and their societal freedoms.
There’s no mention of body parts being dipped
in wine and Charles’ own sanction of such
behaviour, at all.<\/p>\n
Which is a shame, because Worsley does talk about
the notorious image of Barbara Villiers (Chief
Mistress) with her illegitimate son, posing
as the Virgin Mary<\/a>. Linking the two up through
the common appropriation of religious imagery for
lewd purposes would have been an interesting move.
Instead, we get Barbara V as a strikingly
‘modern’ woman, who has power over the
king (but no particular political interest in him)
because she’s Mistress Number One. How
liberating. How strikingly different from every
other period of history, ever.<\/p>\n
I really don’t know why otherwise shrewd
historians are so mad on the old
‘modern’ chestnut – it also irked
me at the Portrait Gallery’s First
Actresses<\/a> exhibition: this eternal language of
‘celebrity’ and ‘PR’ and
‘spin-doctoring’ that either existed in
the past (in which case it’s not truly
‘modern’), or it didn’t (in which
case your theory is manipulating the facts and
distorting our view of the past).<\/p>\n
‘Women in this period have a surprisingly
modern attitude’, she tells us. So we’re
all just the same really, it’s the sisterhood
whatever era it’s in, why can’t we all
just get along. OK, I get what she’s trying to
say: it wasn’t all lead on your face and weird
stuff on your nipples to make them look darker
(which you learn all about, and that’s quite
fun): there’s also something ACCESSIBLE about
the past.<\/p>\n Nell Gwynn, one of Charles
II's most famous mistresses<\/p><\/div>\n
But, again, pretty much every period in history is
claimed as ‘a point where things start getting
modern’. Cardinal Wolsey was the first spin
doctor; Anne Boleyn was the first feminist; Fanny
Hill was the first businesswoman – isn’t
it time we scrapped this cliche and started maybe
thinking about ‘modernity’ as a fairly
arbitrary concept? It’s an artificial divide
intended to make stuff ‘relevant’, which
I get, but perhaps it might have been more
interesting to think about how aspects of this
period’s thinking about women still prevail
today than how Nell Gwynn was just like a
seventeenth century Angelina Jolie. There’s an
implied value judgement here, too: sure, women now
rarely have to wear the ‘scold’s
bridle’ (which we also learn about), but
that’s not to say that everything else is fine
and dandy.<\/p>\n
I mean, on one level, good on Lucy for trying to
make the past accessible at all: it should come as
no surprise to Alphabet<\/a>
readers that I have drawn up several blueprints for
a t-shirt with Samuel Richardson’s face on it
accompanied by the strapline ‘BUT
MADAM!’, so I suspect I am not the target
audience for the whole accessible-history thing.
Horse, gate, bolted &c. But on another level, it
is a bit reductive. Which brings me on to my last
big gripe: the dressing up.<\/p>\n
Now, I love a bit of dressing up, me, but I
didn’t really see how necessary this was
– you don’t catch Simon Schama trying on
fake eighteenth century calves (like padded bras,
but for men concerned about their muscular
shortcomings being exposed by contemporary fashions
for breeches). Kinda wish you did, mind, but Lucy
seems to go through an endless stream of minor
sartorial humiliations for most of this programme,
mostly whilst talking to various Esteemed Academics.
I don’t have an intrinsic problem with it, but
it did make her look a bit infantile, and I kind of
wish it hadn’t.<\/p>\n
So, in conclusion: nice bit of fun for a Monday
night; enjoyed the shout-out to green-sickness;
worth watching if you’re interested in
historical bosoms. As far as any deeper insight
goes, it’s not really up to scratch, and I
wish it had been.<\/p>\n<\/a>
<\/a>