When I was a kid I loved Sherlock Holmes, and thus the Victorian era, more than anything. I dressed up as Holmes for Halloween multiple years, as I grew older I collected Victorian clothes, dressed in corsets and long skirts, carried parasols, and read everything I could about the Victorian Era. I knew I wanted to be an historian.
But wanting to be an historian and being an historian are two different things – something I learned by studying with people who taught me that in order to be someone who loves history (and not just a specific era) I had to take off whatever rose colored glasses i wore, and understand an era for what it was – messy. Sometimes awful. Often discriminatory. And most importantly – not what you want that era to be just because you like it.
Which is why I have a real problem with Those Victorian People on Vox.
You know what doesn’t make you an historian? Pretending that an era was perfect. The Victorian era, despite the pretty ruffles, the spoon corsets (yes, I read Sarah Chrisman’s book – we’ll get there in a minute) and the genteel manners, women weren’t really valued.
Women’s bodies were property. Disability was seen as a Serious Problem and most people with disabilities either a) died, b) were poor, or c) weren’t able to get married effectively making them useless to a society that valued marriage as a social economy.
Oh, and let’s not forget the race issues. Or the religious ones.
So when Sarah A. Chrisman calls her way of life a way of being a historian, I feel the need to call bullshit.
Because what she and her husband are doing is picking and choosing what parts of the Victorian era they choose to live in. Does Ms. Chrisman vote? I’m not sure, but if she does then she is not living an authentically Victorian life. If her name is on the deed to her home, she is not doing so. Furthermore, when she talks about how other people aren’t living authentic lives because they do not live the way that she and her husband do, she’s ignoring a whole swath of people who can’t live her life.
Either because they cannot afford the choices that she makes, or because they physically cannot attain them. I cannot cinch my waist every day, because I have a chronic pain condition. I cannot sleep on a handmade duck down mattress (that I make myself) because my handsewing is terrible, and because my aforementioned chronic pain condition would probably leave me bedridden in a terribly uncomfortable bed as a result.
The most Victorian thing about me is my disability if you think about it – my disability is the result of people not being vaccinated, and thus I’m deaf, blind, and have an as yet undiagnosed chronic pain condition that is likely related to my having been exposed to rubella in utero. How Victorian of me.
But I choose to live in a century that wants me. Maybe not all the time, because this world is still not a safe place to be a woman, but I choose an era where my name can be on the deed to my house. I choose a time when I can turn on a light, and read a book on an e-reader. I choose to live in an era where my husband is not my owner. I choose to vote, to have access to things which make my life easier, so that I can contribute by having my freedom. And that freedom is not merely the freedom to type at my computer.
It is the freedom to have become an historian. My studies taught me a lot – they taught me about how hard it has been for women to get the freedoms I have today, and rather than throw those away for a more authentic lifestyle, I choose to revel in my choices.
I choose to be an historian and see all of the pieces in front of me. The ugliness of the race riots in New York city can inform the way that I read the news today. The violence during suffrage tells me how hard won white women’s rights to vote were – and how much harder it was for women of color. I can look back and know that we have come a long way – and I can do that while still loving the fashions of an era long past. I can dress up in my corset, and my bustle, and sit and have tea, but I can do so with the full knowledge that it is an absolute privilege to do so – I am no better than anyone else when I put on a corset.
Neither is Ms. Chrisman. The way that she writes about her lifestyle bothers me because she behaves as though by calling this research it excuses her smugness – but it doesn’t, it makes her a bad historian. Life the life you want to, but don’t mistake it for what it’s not.
Research.
Lead the life you want, of course, no one is stopping you. Just don’t expect that people will want to live that life with you, or will think your life is better than theirs because of what era you pick, and for Kleio’s sake, don’t treat history as a way to validate your context ignorant choices.