\”They\”, the punditry, the speakers for the kyriarchy, (the politicians, religious speakers, government officials, managers of major institutions and such) speak often of \”the good old days\” and lament the loss of the innocent and idyllic world of America before such modern innovations as women\’s rights, rights for people of colour and recognition of and respect for people who are QUILTBAGS. One standard response to such statements is to point out that one hundred years ago things were in no way innocent, safe and idyllic for many women, people of colour, people who were blind, people who were QUILTBAGS, people who were deaf, people who used wheelchairs……

The problem with that response is that by saying \”yes, but not for….\” one is conceding that there some grain of truth to the statement. The SFTK (speakers for the kyriarchy) are claiming that for those who do not fall into those groups the world, a hundred years ago, was a much nicer, safer, quieter place. The implication is that for the world to become a safer place for \”those people\” \”their\” people had to become less safe. Even though the SFTK might concede that it is fairer that everyone share the same amount of fear and unsafeness many will feel sorry for the pundits and their ilk because they have been asked to give up some of the safety and security that we all wish for.

But they haven\’t. The kyriarchy is not less safe than they were a hundred years ago. I don\’t know how many of them are speaking out of ignorance, how many are lying and how many have managed to convince themselves (and re-convince themselves when necessary.) The kyriarchy then, as now, had the means to buy for themselves the greatest amount of protection and comfort possible.

What about the \”average\” American then? Did they live in a safer, kinder, gentler world than does the average American today? No, the \”average\” American of one hundred years ago did not live in a world whose quiet slumbers were only rarely broken by violence or intimations of violence. Violence, crime and inequities lay all around them and they read of them in their newspapers every day.

For example:
The front page of the November 4, 1911 edition of The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, SC.

Deaths and/or injuries due to crimes:

• HEADLINE: SHOT HIM DEAD / Edgar H Farrar, Prominent New Orleans Attorney, Killed by Thugs / HAD ROBBED HIS HOME (two men are pointed out to the attorney as the people who had robbed his house on the previous day, he pursued them on the street. One took out a revolver and shot him dead.)
• HEADLINE: DID SHE DO IT / Nine Deaths in Chicago Arouse Suspicion of Murder Most Foul ./ WIDOW MAY BE CHARGED (two husbands, two step-children and some borders had died. It was either murder or, as the paper put it, \”a remarkable series of coincidences.\”)
• HEADLINE: RICHESON FORMALLY INDICTED / Minister Will Be Tried for Poisoning Girl (for weeks this story made the front pages across the United States. Richeson, a Boston minister, was charged with giving a young woman poison instead of an abortifacient he had promised her. The young woman was pregnant and such pregnancy would stand in the way of his marriage to a very wealthy woman.)
• HEADLINE: BANDITS HOLDS UP TRAIN / They Fled When a Switch Engine Was In Sight. (somewhere between Bridge Junction and Hurlburt, Arkansas bandits stopped a train and robbed a train and its passengers.)
• HEADLINE: Five Prisoners Break JaiL (in Brunswick, Ga)

Deaths and/or injuries due to lack of modern safety regulations:

• HEADLINE: DEATH CAME SLOWLY / FORTUNE AND CREEPING DEATH WERE CREEPING / A Miner Pinned in a Shaft by a More [sic] of Rock and Lived Thirteen Day (minor who was trapped in a mine shaft and who slowly died over a period of almost two weeks)
• HEADLINE: Four Killed By Train (a woman, her sister and two small children were killed by a fast train at a crossing.)

The SFTK like to blame movements (all those people asking for their rights!) and technologies (cartoons! television! the internet! video games!) for all the ills of the world. Don\’t fall for this line of argument. It is a shell game. Your attention is being directed away from the real cause for shortages, violence and inequities in the system–the kyricarchy and structures that maintain it.

I have time machines in my library. They work like magical one-way windows for when I gaze into them I can see and listen to people from times past yet they cannot see or hear me. Some, I think, suspect that people from the future might occasionally look in on them and so they are on what they feel to be their \”best\” behaviour. It is interesting and informative to see what they consider \”best\” behaviour.\” Other people from the past seem either to be totally unaware or totally unconcerned that people from the future might pass through every once and a while.

Remember the great reveal in Harry Potter when the audience/readers find out that much of the workaday practical magic of Hogwarts was performed by house elfs? That it was they who made the beds and cooked the meals and cleared the tables.

One finds, while reading books written a century ago, that a similar magic was a routine part of the lives of many of the characters. For example, consider the story The Gardener written by E. F. Benson and first published in 1923. As the story opens the unnamed narrator has gone to the country to visit friends for a fortnight in the country.

I arrived there while yet the daylight lingered, and as my hosts were out, I took a ramble around the place. [1] (264)

In the world of Benson\’s narrators (and the people and places they visit) there are always servants around to greet arriving visitors, to carry their luggage to their rooms and to unpack for them.

after ordering tea to be sent up to my gorgeous apartment, No. 23, on the first floor, I went straight up there. . . . The unpacking had been finished, and everything was neat, orderly, and comfortable. . . . There were, as I have said, two beds in it, on one of which were already laid out my dress-clothes, while night-things were disposed on the other. (The Other Bed, 146)

These \”gentle\” men and women don\’t cook, they don\’t clean and they don\’t set the table. They write letters, they visit with friends, they play sports, they go for walks and drives and then they \”dress\’ for dinner. Having changed from their daytime clothes they come down to a table already prepared for them and when finished their meals they go to the drawing room or (if male) drink port and smoke and then go to the drawing room. When they amble upstairs at the end of the evening the daytime clothes they previously shed will have been picked up and their night clothes laid out for them.

They need not even worry whether they might accidentally lock themselves out of their homes for there was always a servant to greet them:

He had forgotten his latch-key, but his housekeeper. . . . must have heard his step, for before he rang the bell she had opened the door, and stood with his forgotten latch-key in her hand. (\”And The Dead Spake–\”, 177)

One might argue that the real fantasy of Harry Potter is that one could receive the type of service that ordinary \”gentle\” men and women once did without feeling uncomfortable that people might be tending to our needs, not due to devoted service but simply for the wages earned–as the ghost of Mr. Tilly learns to his discomfort as he listens in on his servants who have just learned of his death:

\”Poor little gentleman,\” said his cook. \”It seems a shame it does. He never hurt a fly. . .\” The great strapping parlour-maid tossed her head. \”Well I\’m not sure it doesn\’t serve him right,\” she observed. \”Always messing about with spirits. . .But I\’m sorry all the same. A less troublesome little gentleman never stepped. Always pleasant, too, and wages paid to the day.\”

These regretful comments and encomiums were something of a shock to Mr. Tilly. He had imagined that his excellent servants regarded him with respectful affection, as befitted some sort of demigod, and the rôle of the poor little gentleman was not at all to his mind. (Mr. Tilly\’s Séance 278, 279)

Perhaps some of the popularity of Harry Potter and like stories of fantasy and magic is an attempt to recapture all the joys and comforts of times past without all of the baggage of class essentialism and economic inequities those comforts entailed.

---

[1] All quotations are from stories in: Benson, E. The Collected ghost stories of E.F. Benson. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992. &#8617

One hundred years ago today (November 3, 1911) one could read this headline SHALL CORPORATIONS RULE ODGDEN on the front page of the Ogden City (Utah) Evening Standard. This writer(s) of this editorial make the argument that that corporations are inherently \”soul-less\” and that THE CORPORATION WILL TAKE ALL IT IS PERMITTED TO TAKE, AND SOME THINGS THAT IT IS NOT PERMITTED TO TAKE. GREAT CORPORATIONS ARE TAKING POSSESSION OF THE WHOLE NATION..

It is striking that one of the key observations of the piece, that everyone involved with a particular ticket was a current or former member of a corporation, could be made of the incestuous relationship between large corporations and government today. And the question it asks–whether those people if elected would put the good of the corporation over the good of the people who elected them–if one that many are asking today.

The concerns of the Occupy Wall Street movement are similar to those of the grandparents and great grandparents of the people protesting today and even a cursory glance at American newspapers from a century ago indicate that this is a truly grass roots movement. And the grass has very deep roots.

One hundred years ago the headline on the front page of The Tacomo Times read GIRLS TRAPPED IN FIRE DIE IN AGONY. On the previous day (November 1, 1911) a fire had flashed through one of the rooms at the Imperial Powder company in Chehalis Washington. The company supplied explosives to coal mines and the eight women (aged from 14 to 20) who died were working in the mixing room. According to newspapers accounts at the time the fire started In some unexplained manner and ignited the uncovered powder which lay on the long counters of the mixing room. Seven of them died where they stood. One lived long enough to be taken to a hospital where she died a few hours later. A ninth body was reportedly found–so burned that even its gender could not be identified. From the description of the incident it seems that something, perhaps a spark, ignited the powder that lay on every surface and filled the air in the room. The room was, in a instant filled with noxious and fiery gasses. The women, working in a small area between the counters and the wall, had no hope of escaping the conflagration.

The state of Washington had passed laws regulating workplace conditions earlier in the year but they were apparently honoured more in the breach than the observance. And indeed in the initial report of this horror the official statements promised A strict investigation will be held by Coroner Sticklln. How strict, detailed and exhaustive was the investigation? Two days later one can read the following headline on the front page of The Tacoma Times: COMPANY IS EXONERATED. In the two paragraphs below the reader would learn, that the coroner\’s jury last night returned a verdict completely exonerating the company, although it was admitted that the cause of the fire was unknown. And so eight women were buried, six in a shared grave, and no one was to blame for the fire. One hundred years later a monument, paid for by donations of time and money, was finally raised over the graves.

After public outrage in response to the ease with which any responsibility for the deaths was evaded the company was findd less than two thousand dollars (for hiring underaged workers) and the powder making companies of the state were ordered to pay the families of the dead woman just under a thousand dollars for each victim. Dupont Powder\’s balked at paying any part of the fine since it would be, in effect, underwriting one of their competitors.

This is what the work places of America looked like without unions and government regulations. Take care that such conditions do not yet again become the accepted \”cost\” of having a job.

Fringe is one of my favourite television shows right now. It does require that one willfully suspend much of what one knows about science but for much of the time do can do so at least until the episode in question is over. The other night, however, while rewatching an episode from the second season (Episode 217, Olivia in the Lab With a Revolver) one particular line of dialogue stood out to me. Walter Bishop is engaged in doing one his favourites things: dissecting a corpse. Are you familiar with the Chinese notion of Ch\’i? he asks Agent Dunham. After back and forth repartee with his son he goes on to further explain how this relates the current corpse on the table, The Chinese believe that all living creatures contain an energy, or Ch\’i, and, that with proper training, a simple touch can affect their Ch\’i..

Just think about what the writers of the show have to presume/think/know about the audiences of the show in order for that statement to \’work\’ for even a short period of time. It requires that the Chinese be seen as a monolithic \”other.\” Walter does not say \”many Chinese\” or \”most Chinese\” he says the Chinese. As if each and every person in the People\’s Republic (of whom there are more than 1.3 billion) believes the same things. Even if we have never met someone from the PRC personally, even if we believe that, unlike almost every other culture we know of, all Chinese within a particular subculture will believe exactly the same things in the same ways–a little research demonstrates that there are subcultures/groups in the PRC who would be unlikely to believe in Ch\’i. Consider, a) the PRC of officially atheist, b) that at least 1% of the population is Muslim (1% of 1.3 billion is a lot of people), c) that at least 2% of the population is Christian (again, 2% of 1.3 billion is a lot of people), d) that although some of the Muslims and Christians in the PRC may cling to some aspects of earlier Chinese beliefs some significant percentage of them are willing to risk death in order to adhere to their new belief systems.

Consider what it says about the intended audience of Fringe (and other popular television shows) that characters can make comments about the Chinese without the writers/producers/showrunners fearing a massive backlash against the ignorant and prejudiced statements being spewed by characters we are supposed to find sympathetic and loveable.

Just saying……

Trigger Warning: Quotations of language/imagery that is racially offensive

While glancing through the inside pages of some newspapers published a year ago today I couldn\’t help but notice how the \”race\” of the people in the news was marked. One sees the descriptor \”colored\” after many a name but seldom reads the descriptor \”white.\” This may have been one of the reasons why it seemed \”objectively true\” to people that African-Americans were disproportionately likely to be criminals–after all, you might imagine someone explaining, \”every time I read about crime or court cases story after story is about a colored man or woman\” [NOTE: Unfortunately the word that many a white American would have though in their head was far more offensive than \’colored\’ but I am not willing, even for the sake of exploring the internal self-justifications of the white American in 1911, to type it here]

Clearly the \”default\” human being in the mind of the writers (and most of the readers) was white. Certainly the default \’professional,\’ \’high achieving,\’ \’socially prominent,\’ or \’holder of political office\’ was white. Depending on the context and content of the article that white person was also usually a man. Since African-Americans had restricted opportunities in the American of 1911 and since most \”white\” newspapers gave limited coverage to the successes of African-Americans the reader reads only of \”presumably\” white people excelling and carefully marked \”not white\” people committing crimes.

Look, for example, at page 5 The Times-Dispatch (Richmond, VA: Oct. 31, 1911). The only instance on that page of a person being specifically identified as white was the story of the young woman who was released (and indeed given a ticket to her desired destination) after having been taken into custody when she suffered a memory lapse while riding on public transportation. The detail of her race explains why she was \”given her freedom,\” as the article put it, with such care and consideration. As we look at the rest of that page we read about:

• Jack Meyers, the young North Carolinian
• Thomas Williams, a prominent druggist
• James Easley. colored
• Mary Shaw, colored
• Charles Murray, colored, of Caroline county. a student (who was found overcome by gas in his hotel room by a porter)
• George Robinson, colored, (who was kicked by one of the horses in the engine company)
• David Johnson, colored (struck under the eye by a stone while working)
• Daniel Tlmberlake, colored

The writers/editor use \’colored\’ where they would, for a white man, use a racially neutral descriptor, as in the case of Meyers and Williams. In one particular instance one can see how clearly that use and non-use of the racial descriptor indicates that the default presumption is \”white:\”

• The hearing of William Brautigan, charged with pouring gasoline on Marshall Washington, colored

White the default is \”white\” the reader is not thinking, consciously, as they read each name, \”Jack Meyers, white\” or, more to the point \”William Brautigan, white\” and therefore falls easily into the misconception that the criminal class is overwhelming African-American.

How typical is this \”marking\” of African-Americans in American newspapers of the time? It is not strange to see it in a newspaper aimed at the white, middle-class of the one-time capital of the Confederate States of America but would one see it elsewhere? I turned to The Washington Times (District of Columbia, Oct. 31, 1911) to find the same phenomenon on the front page:

• John Clark, colored, and his wife, Lilly, were held for action of the grand jury
• For the assault she committed on her teacher In the National Training School, a colored Institution for missionarles and religious workers, Hannah Crawford, colored, was sentenced to serve six months

There were other stories about crime on that page but in no instance was the person charged with the crime, or suspected of having committed a crime, identified as \”white.\” And, as the quotes above indicate, institutions and places, as well as people, were marked as \”colored\” as for example, the Plymouth Congregational Church, colored, Seventeenth and P streets northwest, will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary. [The Washington Times (District of Columbia, Oct. 31, 1911), page 4.] As was the case in The Times-Dispatch the one area of paper in which the descriptor \”white\” was used frequently was the \”Help Wanted\” columns.

Of course, in many ways Washington D. C. was culturally a southern city. Some of the differences in the level and type of racial prejudice in different areas of the country can be seen looking at a number of articles in The Sun (New York) of the same day. Instead of referring to African-Americans as \”colored\” in The Sun they are described as \”negro.\” In the page 5 story THEATRE BARRED A NEGRO And latter Causes Arrest of Lyric\’s Treasurer–A Test Case the reader learns that Baldwin, the African-American gentleman in question, had bought orchestra tickets to a performance only to have to be told that he and his guest could not be seated in the orchestra area. Indeed they were told that no New York theatre would seat them in the orchestra area because it would ruin the business. They were offered balcony tickets but Baldwin chose to press charges against the theatre manager.

While that story offers some hope (after all Baldwin was not attacked and was able to press charges) it also casts a bright light on the attitudes of theatre-going New Yorkers. There were enough of them who refused to be seated in an area that also seated African-Americans that theatres routinely practiced de facto, if not de jure, segregation.

Elsewhere in the newspaper stories routinely report that people are negro but never that people are white, for example: a Polish farmer and a Polish farmhand who does not speak English were fatally beaten by two negro [again, page 5.]

From reading the newspapers from the different areas one senses that there was less legal collusion with racial prejudice in some areas than others and that violence was used less often to support racial inequities in some areas than others. One senses that for all the appearance of a \”friendlier\” form of prejudice in one area than another the violence necessary to support and maintain the existing system was lying close to the surface ready to erupt if every the system was challenged.

Trigger Warning: Quotations of language/imagery that is racially offensive

One hundred years ago the lead story in The Times-Dispatch (Richmond, VA) was the death of Joseph Pulitzer. The story of the newspaper magnate\’s climb from penniless immigrant to wealth and influence covered much of the front page of that (and many other) newspapers. As I reading about Pulitizer a much smaller headline near the bottom of the front page catch my eye: MOB SEEKS FUGITIVE: Negro Was Captured and Confessed, but Made His Escape. [Note: All headlines in this series retain the original rather idiosyncratic capitalizations.] According to this story, dateline Washington, GA, Walker had been \”arrested\” for the shooting of C. S. Hollenshead (one of the town merchants), had confessed, had been taken away from the sheriff and his deputy on the public square and had escaped from the crowd that had taken him. The latest word was that he was being hunted in Wilkes county by several hundred men with dogs. If the mob located him, a lynching is certain the reader is told.

As is true in so many of these stories of lynchings, it is clear that the local officers of the law put up at most token resistance to the vigilantes. What was less clear, from the limited details in this article, was how the man managed to escape from the crowd that had seized him. A search of other newspapers yielded slightly more information and details that made the incident even more disturbing. The headline in The Sun (Oct. 20 1911, New York) reads WHISKEY SPOILS A LYNCHING: Members of Mob Too Drunk lo Pull Negro Up After Hope Was Around His Neck and provides more background. No one witnessed the shooting of Hollenshead, suspicion fell on Walker because his wife \”had trouble\” with the dead man. Walker was brought into town in at 2:30 in the morning after being arrested and there just happened to be a crowd of approximately fifty men in the public square just in the right place to intercept the sheriff, his deputy and Walker on the way to the jail. The confession, if there was one, was obtained from Walker only after he was already in the hands of an angry mob and served the purpose of removing suspicion of another man (also African-American) already in custody.

From the description of what happened next, it seems that the crowd of men had been whiling away their time waiting for the sheriff to bring in Walker drinking for they were so drunk that Walker was able to escape from them–although only after they had put the noose around his neck.

The editors at The Sun seem to have found the whole affair rather amusing while the editors of The Times-Dispatch seem to want to assure their readers that Walker will soon be recaptured.

I sit here, 100 years later, and wonder what happened to Walker. Did he escape? Was his wife okay or did the angry mob go back to his home and take out on her the violence they were unable to visit on her husband? If Walker lived did he dream every night of that moment when the rope went around his neck and did he shiver with remembered fear every time he heard the sound of dogs in the distance?

Sometimes I wonder how much the readers of a hundred years from now will miss when reading things written today. Will most readers of the future find overly subtle the things which we now view as anvils and Chekhov\’s guns? I know that many of today\’s readers when reading books written a century ago miss clues and signs that would have been crystal clear to the original intended audience. Take for example this sentence from E. F. Benson\’s Gavron\’s Eye (published in 1912):

Also it was said that, although it was a hot afternoon, she wore a big cloak.

It is a wonderfully telling line that informs the character\’s past and foreshadows the character\’s future and one that may go right by a reader today if they are not used to Edwardian writing as well as social and class conventions.

People talk much about \”genre fiction\” and the necessity of being genre-savvy if one is to get everything out of particular types of texts. Similarly, reading books written in earlier times or different cultures requires the reader to be \”history/culture context savvy.\” The unsavvy reader may miss much of the careful characterization of the protagonist if, for example, they don\’t know about conventions that character is challenging or adhering to. Indeed they may even be aware that the character is acting in a particular way in relationship to a cultural convention because they are unaware of the convention itself.

How does one become context savvy? By doing a lot of reading. It helps if one can find editions with good annotations. Read many books from the same time/culture. Read books written a decade before and a decade after. If you are slightly obsessive compulsive you might consider ordering all the books on your shelves by date they were written so that you are aware that while Edith Wharton was writing this, Agatha Christie was writing that and T. S. Eliot was writing something else.

And if you are forced to share your shelves with someone who prefers the less heuristically useful convention of shelving books alphabetically by author\’s last name (within or across genres) then you at least have a publication order spreadsheet tucked away somewhere.

Trigger Warning: Quotations of language/imagery that is racially offensive

One hundred years ago the American Civil War was \”fifty years ago.\” Just as the New York Times has been running a series of \”100 years ago\” articles on the events that led up to, and occurred during, the Civil War, fifty ears ago The Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia) was doing the same.

It isn\’t surprising to the non-American reader that there would be many bitter and lingering memories of Civil War in Richmond Virginia. Virginia itself was one of the states that seceded and become one of the Confederate States. The northwest portion of the state, in turn, seceded from Virginia. This area was then admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, as the state of West Virginia. Richmond became the capital of the Confederate State of Virginia. Many of the readers of the Times Dispatch were either veterans of the Confederate Army, were relatives of members of the Confederate Army, had lived through the invasion and occupation of their city or had relatives who had lived through the invasion and occupation.

What is surprising is the degree to which the Confederate cause is treated as dominant, triumphant, honoured and powerful throughout this (as well as earlier and later) issues of the newspaper.

Bear in mind that the demographic of the newspaper\’s circulation was not the poor and disadvantaged of society. It\’s readership was not primarily made up of those who had been displaced and overthrown by shifts in power after the conclusion of the Civil War. The Times-Dispatch is full of society news and advertisements for pricey goods. In addition to the section to the society pages there was separate section for business and investments. To the left of the banner on the front page is a box with the text \”Children\’s page of T.D.C.C.\” and to the right a box with the text \”Confederate and Geneology.\” Page 2 is games and puzzles.

On page 3 of the October 29, 1911 edition the reader will find the regular Sunday Our Confederate Column. To the right of the column is the poem The Veterans\’ Cross of Honor and it is clear from its words that the veterans in the title are of the Confederate Army since they are said to wear the U.D.C. (United Daughters of the Confederacy) cross and the reader is told The wealth of world cannot purchase this emblem/Unless the buyer wore the gray too. The President of the encounter described in the article on the same page GENERAL PENDLETON AND THE PRESIDENT is Jefferson Davis (the first and only president of the Confederacy.)

Page 4 is set aside for cartoons which largely depend on crude and offensive stereotypes of African-Americans for their \”humour.\” The news in the society pages (and that is how they are titled) is of engagements, marriages and debutantes. The descriptions of the events (and the advertisements that accompany them) indicate that much of the readership is at least socially and financially \”comfortable\” if not more.

The Times-Dispatch had previously run articles about the final fate the great seal of the Confederate States. In this edition they print an \”answer\” to the question with a long interview with the man who had been Jefferson Davis\’ \”body servant.\” SECRET OF THE GREAT SEAL OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES: James H. Jones, Body-Servant to President Jefferson Davis, Tells How He Hid It, and Will Never Divulge Place of Concealment. The next page is largely given over to the article Stonewall Jackson–Protest Against Picture as Drawn in \”The Long Roll\” By His Wife, Mary Anna Jackson, a piece written, as billed, by Jackson\’s widow to protest and contradict the verbal picture of him and his behaviour in the recently published \”The Long Roll.\”

One might ask \”so what?\” These are just a group of relatively privileged people who can live with the myth of the glorious south and pen paeans to the gray clad \”heroes\” of the \”War between the states.\” There are two answers:

First, the Union may have won the war militarily but they have clearly lost it culturally. The society that had grown up in the south since the war did not see slavery as having been a moral wrong. By mythologizing antebellum society they turned any call for civil rights and equal treatment for African-Americans as an attack on the southern society\’s mores and heroes. African-American were born, grew up and were educated in a society in which the people who had gone to war to deny them their rights were lionized.

Second, in general (except as \”faithful body servants\”) African-Americans are for the most part absent from these pages. It is not in the \”news\” section of The Times-Dispatch that you read about lynchings. But if you turn to the \”Help Wanted\” section at the back of the paper you can see just how segregated life was in Richmond, Virginia was in 1911 and how delimited opportunities were on the basis of one\’s colour or one\’s gender.

Help Wanted: Male

• Wanted, White and colored men to work In nursery and on packing grounds
• WANTED-COLORED MEN WITH references wishing position as sleeping car or train porters, firemen or brakemen
• WANTED WHITE MAN TO WORK ON dairy farm

Help Wanted: Female

• SETTLED WHITE WOMAN OR GIRL wanted as general helper
• WANTED, AN EXPERIENCED COLORED nurse for children.
• WANTED. 50 WHITE AND COLORED women, cooks, maids, nurses
• WANTED, A COMPETENT WHITE nurse

The Civil War may have been over but the battle for Civil Rights still remained to be won.

Spoiler Warning: Discussion of the differences among the three presentations of the Blandings story will necessarily involve implicit and explicit spoilers

Jim and Muriel Blandings have been awoken by the alarm clock, he has received his morning glass of juice from the maid and brought Muriel\’s morning coffee to the bedroom. One daughter has finished showering and the other was last seen diving into the bathroom.

There is still more morning misery at the Blandings\’ home for the audience to witness.

Jim Blandings is feeling very put upon. He daughter asks him, very sharply, why every morning he neglects to knock on the bathroom door before opening it. I beg your pardon. Jim says peevishly after his daughter is out of earshot. Once in the bathroom he is clearly annoyed that someone has been squeezing the toothpaste tube from the middle and that items fall out of the medicine cabinet when he opens it. Jim proceeds to take a shower and is still in the bathroom (now shaving) while Muriel showers. When he opens the shower door to give her a washcloth (and then later a towel) the mirror becomes too steamed up to be of use. Jim, again, sighs to himself as only the put upon can sigh. Then Muriel, fresh from her shower, gets in his way as he continues to shave blocking out his view of the mirror. He cuts himself shaving and complains. I cut myself every morning. I kind of look forward to it. She asks, Why don\’t you use an electric razor?

This scene leaves me with a number of questions:

1. Why is Jim so annoyed when his daughter asks him to knock before barging into the bathroom?
2. Why won\’t Jim put up another shelf/mirror in the bathroom so that the storage space is adequate to the number of people sharing the room?
3. Why does Muriel need to shower at the same time that Jim is shaving?
4. What bathroom does Gussie (the maid) use?

One answer to questions 1-3 is, of course, because if they dealt reasonably with their limited space there would be no need for them to move to a very large house in the country. And therefore there would be no movie.

A second answer to questions 1-3 is that if the Blandings arranged they lives more efficiently their \”plight\” would not evoke as much sympathy from an audience made up of people who took home far less money and often had far less space than the family on the screen.

However the questions do bring some interesting thoughts to mind.

1) Earlier Jim didn\’t knock before opening his daughters\’ bedroom door. Jim treats all spaces as his. To knock is to acknowledge that someone else at least shares control over a space.

2) Jim doesn\’t do things. He is an executive. He is a manager. He tells other people to do things. Even he would, I think, feel slightly silly hiring a handyman to put up a bathroom shelf. If it is something that Jim doesn\’t know how to do (or cannot see himself doing) and it isn\’t a task that he can easily and routinely delegate to others then it never enters his conscious mind.

3) I think we can safely assume that Production Code would find it totally acceptable for either Muriel or Jim to use the toilet while the other is in the room however Muriel has to fix herself up so she can look like a nice upper middle housewife at breakfast. In the \”real world\” she would probably do this by getting up long before Jim so that she could use the bathroom before he got up. Muriel does not have a job. She doesn\’t need to get ready for work.

4) For those who have never seen the movie it may be important to point out that Gussie is African-American. It would be quite unlikely for the white maid of a white upper class family to use the same bathroom as did they but it would be totally unacceptable for an African-American maid to do so. So I found myself wondering if there were meager toilet facilities \”back there\” in the space Gussie used. Or perhaps there were facilities out in the hallway that all the \”help\” in the building used? Whatever the answer some of the square footage of that apartment was out of bounds to the Blandings given the attitudes at the time towards African-Americans.

So far the audience has seen life at the Blandings only through the eyes of Jim. And Jim sees himself as a put upon individual living in the middle of chaos and clutter. Thus members of the audience don\’t think to themselves that the Blandings have far more room than do they and if only if they used a little bit of elbow grease and common sense most of their problems would disappear.