I recently read an annotated version of Mansfield park, and while the book was fascinating from a historical and informational perspective, I found the story and writing itself rather heavy-handed. I believe that of Austen’s novels, this one has aged the least gracefully.
Fanny is, like Melanie Wilkes of “Gone With The Wind,” a mealy-mouthed chit. A goody-goody without the faintest spark of spirit (or realism) who sits passively by and somehow allows her faint charm to carry the day.
On the other hand, lazy, spoiled wastrel Tom Bertram, louche Henry Crawford, and vulgar, coquettish Mary Crawford are all so broadly characterized that they, too, strike me as caricatures rather than characters.
Then, there are the Socratic dialogues between saintly Edmund and insipid Fanny; effectively, Edmund works a pygmalion job on Fanny, evidently an age-old device in love stories.
Even taking into account the differences in women’s roles between Austen’s day and today, even taking into account the differences in literary styles, I still have a hard time wholeheartedly praising this novel on account of its lack of subtlety and overt didacticism. It struck me as Austen having some sort of axe to grind, as opposed to her usual smiling-in-her-sleeve approach, and in that, lost a great deal of charm.
I’ve made a couple of shirtwaist dresses lately, a nod to that sort of late-1950s/early-1960s style that seems to be floating around courtesy of Mad Men and Pan Am and the like. Also, because I like that sort of style and it suits my figure. Anything with a great deal of structure and a well-defined natural waist is generally a good choice for me.
So, the following is what I’ve done with a bit of my spare time and some cheap cotton calicos:
New Look 6587, dating from 2006 is a pattern I have had around for a few years and just hadn’t gotten around to trying out. I’d read mixed reviews about the fit and ease-of-use, so I went after this one cautiously, with some fabric I only felt lukewarm about.
As you can see, I changed it up a bit. I cut the facing double and reversed it to form a contrasting placket. I added contrast cuffs to the sleeves and used the flared sash that was meant to go with the sleeveless model. I also eliminated the collar, because I liked the simplicity of just the bound neckline. It would make up just as nicely if I actually followed the instructions as given, but I am rather partial to my re-interpretation of this style, and will probably make it up again in some other combination of prints.
It’s an excellent dress for summer, as it is lightly fitted and stands away from the body. There’s nothing like a cheapie cotton dress for summer, as it looks presentable and nice, but is breezy and simple to wear.
I did, however, swear many vile epithets as I stitched all those buttonholes. People, this dress has 12 buttons down the front. That’s a stinking lot of button holes, is what that is.
However, I recently acquired a game changer:
Huh?
Any clearer?
How ’bout now?
So…this is the famous buttonhole attachment, and boy, does it ever work like magic:
Noisy as heck, yes, but quick, neat, and convenient.
When I was looking it over in the junk shop, I noted this:
The word “slant” seemed to indicate that it would work with the angled needle shaft of my Singer 401A “Slantline.”
And lo, it does. It fits right on perfectly!
And it made making this:
a whole lot easier. I think it took maybe 20 minutes from measuring and marking to finishing the buttonholes for this dress, and there are 10 of them! Now, sewing on the buttons was quite another story. These are wooden buttons with a pronounced ring around the outside and they would not fit under my button foot in any direction. So I sewed all of the buttons on by hand, and I hand-stitched the hem, as I wanted it to be absolutely invisible from the outside, and I do a mean blind hem by hand. Theoretically my sewing machine can be called upon to produce a blind hem, but it is not nearly as discreet as a hand-sewn blind hem.
So, anyway, there’s shirtwaister #2:
It was based off a 1970s Butterick pattern. I didn’t have enough fabric to cut the sleeves long, and since I wanted it for a warm-weather dress anyway, I just folded up the sleeve pattern to create a cuffed short sleeve. Otherwise, I followed the pattern instructions as given. I don’t really love the stitched down pleats in the skirt, now that I am done with it. It has a kind of awkward look to it. After all of that effort, it is kind of a bummer to not be that satisfied with my work, but it will do. I still really, really like the fabric and the buttons, and I can live with the skirt. I think this dress will transition well to autumn, and will probably look really cute with my tall, brown boots.
I think I may try this pattern again with the a-line skirt. It will be worlds easier with the simpler skirt pattern, and I think more becoming to my figure. Also more economical. Pleated skirts are awful fabric hogs! I do like the fit and shape of the bodice – even the enormous and very dated Italian collar. If I make it up with the long sleeves, they have a very nice barrel cuff which will look quite smart.
I own a 1953 Schwinn Debutante, a bicycle which is delightfully pretty and gloriously impractical:
This is not a bicycle you ride if you are in a hurry.
I’ve wheeled it out for two special occasions so far this year. It was a belle of the ball on St. Patrick’s Day.
To go with my lovely old green cruiser, I made a green plaid cape and hat, which I’d been planning to make anyway, and the St. Patrick’s Day parade was just the perfect excuse.
This was the fabric and pattern selection. The fabric was some vintage Pendleton wool that my mom’s friend Vi gave me, and the patterns are vintage. The cape came in a shoebox of patterns I bought at a yard sale when I was a college student, and the hat pattern was a present from one of my aunts.
Realistically, the wool was a little too heavy and stiff for the hat pattern, and so it didn’t slouch like it was supposed to. I felt a bit like a plaidy Paddington Bear. But the cape exceeded my expectations.
I changed the neckline a bit. I tried it on with pins holding it closed at the originally-marked buttonholes, and it felt too scratchy and claustrophobic, so I re-measured and re-marked for the button holes to start about 6″ lower, and it ended up making a very nice notched collar instead.
The buttons are some old, silver-y concho-style buttons salvaged off a coat I had when I was a little kid.
The buttons on the epaulettes are some random little pewter buttons that Joel unearthed out of the bottom of his thread box and turned over to my creative efforts.
The lilac dress I wore underneath the cape was one I got at a yard sale in the Northeast several years ago, along with some other great outfits from the same era.
Probably mid-to-late 1960s.
Now that they’re finally broken in, I really, really like them, and I can wear them all day (and even take a short bike ride while wearing them!). But man alive. They were wicked uncomfortable when they were new. I nearly gave them away a couple of times.
In my junior year of highschool, a neighbor lady recruited my sister and I to play Easter Bunny to her three kids.
The set-up was simple. She left the key under the mat, bags of candies in the cupboard, and took the kids in to town for Easter service at church and brunch with Grandma. We let ourselves into her house, and scattered foil-wrapped chocolates and two-tone plastic eggs full of stickers, wash-off tattoos, and jelly beans all throughout the house.
Some years earlier, I’d babysat these kids, when they were littler and less biddable, so I knew the house and all of its nooks and crannies well. I knew where the middle boy used to like to sneak off and surreptitiously eat full packets of luncheon meat. I knew where the oldest boy liked to hide and spring out, wearing a werewolf mask and making “fearsome” snorts and growls. The parents had an eclectic selection of antiques and quirky furnishings rife with shelves, brackets, curlicues, and divots in which foil-wrapped chocolate eggs could be secreted.
We worked fast, not knowing exactly how long church or brunch would take. We wanted to be gone before noon. We tore ass around the house balancing eggs on curtain rods, on top of books on the shelves, behind figurines on the fireplace mantle, between the bannisters on the stairs, on the ladder rails of the boys’ bunk bed, in the slats of the Venetian blinds…basically everywhere that you could possibly wedge a Krisp egg, a marshmallow bunny, or a plastic egg full of treats, we hit.
Like reverse burglars, we worked with a thrilling sense that we could be caught in the act. In two hours, we exhausted the supply of sweets and left the house sprinkled with pastel-colored goodies twinkling in every crick and cranny.
By the time we’d been recruited for Bunny Duty, all three kids were in school. Kindergarten, first, and second graders, I think. For the boys, they were just about at that age that the magic dissipates, when you learn that Santa, the Easter Bunny, and all that are not real, and after that, the pretense is never quite so satisfying as the pre-enlightenment excitement.
So knowing that we were helping give these kids a real good magical hoorah was an excellent feeling. Give ’em one to remember, you know. They were big enough to appreciate it, yet still little enough to appreciate it, too.
We left a note on the door, at child’s-eye-level, written on purple note paper adorned with sparkly “egg” stickers telling the kids to have a look around.
Their mom reported later that our mission had been a wild success, and that our egg-hiding skills were so good that they were still turning up the occasional chocolate a good two weeks afterward.
I dreamed I helped put together a robot for picking up trash (like WallE kind of), but basically it mostly just masturbated a lot. When it climaxed, it shot springs out.
We have dung beetles around here, actually. Out in the Flint Hills. When you go out on the gravel roads along cow pastures, it is not uncommon to see a beetle rolling a poo-pellet along the ground. Or several beetles quarreling over a particularly prosperous poopball.
I apparently also have a shitty-pop-cultural situation, because I don’t watch the Jersey shore, except for the clips that find their way on to Beavis & Butthead (which, by the way, the new Beavis & Butthead rules, it rules!!)
But anyway, I thought the boy whose hair sticks all up was The Situation, but a little Googleation tells me that the sticky-uppy-hair boy is Pauly D.
Which is actually different from Pauly Shore.
Who looks pleasantly normal nowadays, though I bet he still acts like a weird, noisy dweeb. That’s his schtik, as best I recall. Once upon a time, this was cool.
Anyway, my hair is all weird. Again. As usual, perhaps. It went “fa-whoosh.” I tried to put some pomade in it and brush it into a shape, but it just rose back up into the Struwwelpeter barnet you see above. A shower will be in order to fix this.
What you see before you is my “new” stove, a 1950s-era Magic Chef gas range and oven which pretty much outclasses everything else currently residing in my kitchen.
Never mind you that the new stove is currently residing on the back porch. It’s in good company. It’s got a disconnected Swedish woodstove and a mysteriously non-op gas-powered bar-b-que gril to keep it from getting too lonesome.
We’re Klassy.
There’s also a bathtub in our back yard. Not on the porch, mind, and not housing a B.V.M, but it is here nonetheless, awaiting its eventual installation in our bathroom. It’s an old clawfoot, circa 1910 (like the house, actually) and has since been turned turtle and tarped over, so as not to accumulate water.
So yeah, the whole process of renovating a house is a freakin’ pain in the ass. DIY has that whole “doing it yourself” aspect which, when taken into account the time you have available to do it, and the money required, and all that business, means that doing it takes for AGES and you end up forgetting what your house looked like when you didn’t have a full backstage pass to the stud show.
(sheepish shepherds get in free) (cats who destroy my beautiful seafoam green lounge suite, however, are barred from the premises – assholes)
Anyway, enough with the woes of dallying DIY. I really came here to show off pictures of a pretty stove, so click away and enjoy all of the chrome-plated, Bakelite-knobèd glory.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox would have had a hard time being any better. When I finished it, I wanted to start reading it all over again from the beginning and enjoy it once more. It was a letdown that it ended. It was the sort of novel you wish could somehow go on and on indefinitely. It was fantastic. It was a heady mix of mystery, intrigue, and twisted family secrets. I often wondered how “insane” Esme really had been, and whether the red dress that opens the novel would be linked to her…
Along with wanting to re-read The Vanishing Act and re-join Iris, and Esme, it made me want to hunt out everything else that Maggie O’Farrell had written and read it. ASAP.
Ever since I read The Extra Large Medium, I have been in the mood for well-written paranormal or para-magical (is that even a term?) stories. Fantasy with a firm grounding in reality. I want regular women doing regular things, with the occasional appearance of ghosts, magical powers, or extrasensory perception. Therefore, the famous and wildly popular Time Traveler’s Wife would seem to fit the bill exactly.
Unfortunately, this book has done nothing but annoy me almost from page 1. I made it about a third of the way through and gave up in irritated defeat. Could Clare be more of a Mary Sue? I have a hard time imagining how. Every other page seems to contain a reference to her ethereal loveliness, and she’s got that helpless clinging-vine thing down cold. Niffinger spends WAY too much time trying to convince her readers of how attractive her characters are to look upon and devotes shockingly little energy to making them interesting, sympathetic, or compelling. Henry seems like some sort of automaton – he’s just an animated dummy being shown off in all sorts of exotic display windows. He shows surprisingly little drive to try to find a workaround for his teleportation problem. Speaking of which, I think his story would be plenty interesting with out Clarey-Sue hanging around. I was regularly rooting for less back-story and more time-traveling.
Speaking of back-story, I also felt that “genetic defect” was a piss-poor way to explain Henry’s teleportation. It makes no sense and it’s just really dumb. It would sit a lot better with me if it were explained as the side effect of some sort of scientific trials, or an affliction from a malicious deity, or some other sort of paranormal activity. Teleportation/time-travel just isn’t a genetic thing. Even in fantasy literature. You just don’t inherit a temporal homing device or a lack thereof.
Anyway, what with the overwrought prose, the annoying characters, and the oppressive lack of any real action, I think I’m giving up on The Time Traveler’s Wife. I really wanted to like it, but I just don’t, and I’m pretty bummed out about that, actually.
Also the childhood Clare/adult Henry friendship angle? Creepy as all hell, in every possible way. The meeting of Clare and Henry for the “first” time (from Henry’s perspective) just gave me the skeevin’ wiggins. So. Much. Yick. The romance of their relationship, such as it was, made me crazy uncomfortable, and not in an intellectually-challenged way, but in a “grody-Daddy-Complex-can’t-watch-without-covering-my-eyes” sort of way.
You probably have seen this video that is making the rounds, of a surprisingly articulate little girl being coached by her Dad through a Socratic discussion on gender marketing of toys.
While I applaud the family for encouraging their kid to think about marketing and gender expectations, I find myself more than a little bit annoyed at all of the people chiming in and trashing on “girls’ stuff” in a me-too attempt to jump on the bandwagon.
If I am to believe the various news features, the little girl in the clip above is four years old. When you are four, your understanding of the world is necessarily limited and a lot of the views you have are formed by the people around you, principally your parents and immediate caregivers. Evidently, her parents are encouraging her to have diverse interests and laying the foundations for logical inquisition and critical thinking.
And kudos to them for that!
But, because she is 4, her opinions are not necessarily her own original thoughts, and they are necessarily simplified, so that if you were to take her word at face value, the message would be that “pink stuff” is no good, and that girls have to be “tricked” into wanting it. There’s also the undertone that because girls have to be tricked into wanting pink stuff, that pink stuff is of lesser value, that “girls’ stuff” is inferior to the superhero stuff for boys. That boys’ stuff is better than girls’ stuff…and whoops, we’ve inadvertently internalized the misogynistic messages of the patriarchy. This is surely not what this kid’s parents were going for, but it is what the blogosphere seems to have extracted from the little girl’s argument.
Now, I completely understand the frustration with running up against the majority of products intended for my sex being in stereotypical girly colors like pink, purple, and powder blue, none of which are amongst my favorites and none of which suit my peculiar sallow complexion (with the exception of the brighter, more coral/salmon/poppy shades of pink). Good god, look at ladies’ cycling gear. It’s a morass of foul pastel shades, and I, for one, won’t buy or wear it. Not because I hate girly stuff, but because I look like I’m about to have a chunder in powder blue.
But the argument I keep seeing across the internet is that girly stuff is crummy. Woman keep insisting that they were tomboys growing up, that they were rough-and-tumble, that they shunned dolls and soft toys and tea parties, and were more at home in a mud puddle with a football and a battery powered monster truck.
And I keep thinking, “revisionist history much?”
Because most of us are a conglomeration of various interests, inclinations, and impulses, I am willing to bet that many of these “tomboy” girls were also into rollerskates, perhaps with rainbow laces and pompoms on the toes. That they had a beloved Cabbage Patch or Care Bear who snuggled down with them every night, and that, when all was said and done, probably had quite a few glittery unicorns in their sticker albums. That doesn’t mean that I doubt their enjoyment of mud puddles and Stomper trucks, because I well know the manifold joys of both.
It means that I question the assertion that Stompers supersede the Barbie Corvette, which was, in fact, pretty fuckin’ rad. I should know – Sis and I had one to share. I used to disassemble Stomper trucks in order to motorize the Barbie car, so that our girlies could roll in automated style.
The thing about denigrating girly stuff is that it devalues the girls who honestly and earnestly enjoy all that is pink and frilly. Many girls wax and wane in their enthusiasm for lacy, fluffy princess dresses and all things glam and gorgeous. Why shit all over some little kid’s taste in Belle and Cinderella when it amounts to nothing more than appreciating a bit of fabulous? Just because she loves Sleeping Beauty now, doesn’t mean that she’s going to expect a whole herd of short guys to be at her beck and call when she’s grown.
Little girls need the message that it’s okay to be fancy and frilly, if they want to, but they don’t have to, either. Just as they need to know that Tinker Toys and Legos are huge fun, and that boys and girls can both enjoy them.
Too many girls get fed the message that girls’ stuff sucks and that girls suck, and get a shitty attitude about other girls. They act like because they have dodged the stereotypical “girly” bullet, that other girls who have succumbed are weak, wimpy, dumb, and no-good-at-all. It just burns my ass when I hear other women say shit like, “I only hang out with guys – other women are all catty bitches,” or “I never was a girly girl….” or in some other way denigrate surface femininity.
When you trash-talk a large swath of your cohort, when you put out the attitude that other women are inferior to yourself, when you dismiss out of hand another woman because she’s wearing pink and has a complicated hairdo, you’re being an asshole. And it’s no wonder that other women react badly to your attitude.
Pink in and of itself, is a color. And color preferences are a matter of personal aesthetics. Yes, your personal aesthetics can be influenced by the culture around you, but if you have been given or have personally acquired the tools to examine the culture around you, then you should be good to determine your own likes and dislikes, and if anyone else has a problem with what you wear or how you present yourself, that that problem is theirs, not yours.
I think the little kid in the original video will eventually have the means to determine for herself whether she wants princesses or superheroes, and I hope that everyone else can bring themselves to such a point, as well.
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
