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1900 House
Oct. 22nd, 2009 10:08 amOne of my panels for Windycon is "Lady Adventurers." Basically, this is a panel to talk about the collection of upper-class Victorian female explorers and travelers. Prepping for this panel got me thinking about why these ladies were all upper class.
The answer - The 1900 House. This was a PBS reality show (and see, you thought all reality TV was crap*) about a British family that spent three months in a house outfitted with all the modern conveniences of 1900 - and only the conveniences of 1900. That means no electricity, central heating and a coal-fired stove.
They had a "confession room" - a room with a camera where the family could go to tell the viewers about their day. I remember one such visit - the lady of the house started by saying "I'm not wearing any knickers." Turns out that, before washing machines, laundry was an all-day affair, and girls were routinely kept out of school on laundry day to help. (Also, some un-Godly number of small children, like a thousand a year, died by scalding back then. By comparison, modern Britain was in the high double digits.) So, she decided to reduce the workload by free-wheeling, so to speak. And it wasn't just laundry that was dragging her down. Try cooking on a coal-fired stove!
My point, and the tie-in to the panel, is this: prior to the middle of the 20th Century, running a house was a 60- to 80-hour a week job. There was a lot of work, hard physical stuff, time-consuming, and it had to get done. The only people, certainly the only women, who had any great amount of free time, were wealthy. They could hire servants to do this stuff for them. Unmarried women of wealth could also live in a hotel if desired.
Related to this issue was the popularity of boarding houses. I am a single man, and I live alone because, thanks to modern technology, housework can be a part-time job. (Full disclosure - I can also afford a maid service, which comes in every other week for two hours). Back in 1900, I would either need a full-time servant or reside at a boarding house, just to keep up with housekeeping.
Technology, or the lack of it, drives what a society looks like.
* It is - this is the exception that proves the rule.
The answer - The 1900 House. This was a PBS reality show (and see, you thought all reality TV was crap*) about a British family that spent three months in a house outfitted with all the modern conveniences of 1900 - and only the conveniences of 1900. That means no electricity, central heating and a coal-fired stove.
They had a "confession room" - a room with a camera where the family could go to tell the viewers about their day. I remember one such visit - the lady of the house started by saying "I'm not wearing any knickers." Turns out that, before washing machines, laundry was an all-day affair, and girls were routinely kept out of school on laundry day to help. (Also, some un-Godly number of small children, like a thousand a year, died by scalding back then. By comparison, modern Britain was in the high double digits.) So, she decided to reduce the workload by free-wheeling, so to speak. And it wasn't just laundry that was dragging her down. Try cooking on a coal-fired stove!
My point, and the tie-in to the panel, is this: prior to the middle of the 20th Century, running a house was a 60- to 80-hour a week job. There was a lot of work, hard physical stuff, time-consuming, and it had to get done. The only people, certainly the only women, who had any great amount of free time, were wealthy. They could hire servants to do this stuff for them. Unmarried women of wealth could also live in a hotel if desired.
Related to this issue was the popularity of boarding houses. I am a single man, and I live alone because, thanks to modern technology, housework can be a part-time job. (Full disclosure - I can also afford a maid service, which comes in every other week for two hours). Back in 1900, I would either need a full-time servant or reside at a boarding house, just to keep up with housekeeping.
Technology, or the lack of it, drives what a society looks like.
* It is - this is the exception that proves the rule.
