Read Online Letters to Alice by Fay Weldon - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Fay Weldon
Tags: General Fiction
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4,000
Employed in agriculture
2,000,000
Male and female servants
800,000
Gamblers, swindlers, thieves, prostitutes, etc.
150,000
Convicts and prisoners
10,000
Aged and infirm
293,000
Wives and daughters of most of the above
2,427,000
Children under ten years of
age
2,750,000
___________
11,000,000
The whole country, you must understand, and using the language of the times, depended for subsistence, and all the conveniences of life, on the labour of less than one half of the total number. Nowadays the whole depend upon the labour of a third of their number.
Your aunt, Fay
*An American term, I’m sorry. But it has a precise and valuable meaning.
LETTER FOUR
The mantle of the Muse
Cairns, January (getting hotter)
D EAR ALICE,
Well, you can’t trust anyone. In an encyclopedia published in 1813 I find in Volume VII, under ‘Midwifery’, that the age of menstruation in the human female is sixteen, and that to start any earlier is a disorder and should be treated by bleeding: leeches, that is. The symptoms of the disorder are a full face, full breasts, sighing and a warm imagination. Rather like Lydia in Pride and Prejudice. I daresay Lydia might have done better with leeches to quieten her down, than to end up with the shifty Mr Wickham. But in Volume XIV, under ‘Physiology’, I see the age of menstruation given as fifteen. Both are rather different from the figures I gave you in my earlier letter. Between sixteen and eighteen, I said then, firmly, using other people’s figures to prove a point I wanted to make. Fiction is much safer than non-fiction. You can be accused of being boring, but seldom of being wrong. I mention my error out of conscience and as a general warning that we all (especially me) tend to remember what it is convenient to remember, and forget what we want to forget, and manage to deduce from given facts what we want to propose.
The encyclopedia is delightfully written by wise and intelligent people. The section on ‘Midwifery’ is a little alarming, it is true. There was a feeling that placentas should be delivered by hand if nature didn’t do it at once, but a rather good notion of using the gentle pressure of the midwife’s hand to stop the perineum tearing. If any of your friends are into obsessive natural childbirth I will give them full details, but I imagine, and certainly hope, that most of you will be finding life so exhilarating and full you will have decided to have no babies at all, ever, and be queuing up at the sterilization clinics, where fortunately the wait is long, and natural childbirth, the Leboyer method, and other male plots against the labouring female the last matter on your mind.
But let me quote further from the section on ‘Midwifery’, here in my encyclopedia. We are dealing with puerperal convulsions — still a major reason for death in childbirth today. The cause is high blood-pressure, and the main work of our ante-natal clinics is to detect it, and cure it before labour starts. Otherwise, now as then, the mother goes into convulsions more severe than in epilepsy, ‘in regard to deformity suppressing anything the imagination of the most extravagant painter ever furnished’, and dies. But the Georgians had their own view of it.
It is most frequent in large towns, and in those women who lead the most indolent life: hence it is to be found in the first circles of fashion, in preference to others, and there is one grand circumstance which has great influence on its production, that is, a woman’s being with child when she should not. Being obliged to live in a state of seclusion from society for some months, perhaps, she reflects and broods over everything which relates to her situation, and which gives her pain: she recollects she is not to enjoy the society of the babe she has borne, but on the contrary will be obliged perhaps to part with it for ever. She is afraid of her situation being known, and that she shall be considered an outcast to society. In
4,000
Employed in agriculture
2,000,000
Male and female servants
800,000
Gamblers, swindlers, thieves, prostitutes, etc.
150,000
Convicts and prisoners
10,000
Aged and infirm
293,000
Wives and daughters of most of the above
2,427,000
Children under ten years of
age
2,750,000
___________
11,000,000
The whole country, you must understand, and using the language of the times, depended for subsistence, and all the conveniences of life, on the labour of less than one half of the total number. Nowadays the whole depend upon the labour of a third of their number.
Your aunt, Fay
*An American term, I’m sorry. But it has a precise and valuable meaning.
LETTER FOUR
The mantle of the Muse
Cairns, January (getting hotter)
D EAR ALICE,
Well, you can’t trust anyone. In an encyclopedia published in 1813 I find in Volume VII, under ‘Midwifery’, that the age of menstruation in the human female is sixteen, and that to start any earlier is a disorder and should be treated by bleeding: leeches, that is. The symptoms of the disorder are a full face, full breasts, sighing and a warm imagination. Rather like Lydia in Pride and Prejudice. I daresay Lydia might have done better with leeches to quieten her down, than to end up with the shifty Mr Wickham. But in Volume XIV, under ‘Physiology’, I see the age of menstruation given as fifteen. Both are rather different from the figures I gave you in my earlier letter. Between sixteen and eighteen, I said then, firmly, using other people’s figures to prove a point I wanted to make. Fiction is much safer than non-fiction. You can be accused of being boring, but seldom of being wrong. I mention my error out of conscience and as a general warning that we all (especially me) tend to remember what it is convenient to remember, and forget what we want to forget, and manage to deduce from given facts what we want to propose.
The encyclopedia is delightfully written by wise and intelligent people. The section on ‘Midwifery’ is a little alarming, it is true. There was a feeling that placentas should be delivered by hand if nature didn’t do it at once, but a rather good notion of using the gentle pressure of the midwife’s hand to stop the perineum tearing. If any of your friends are into obsessive natural childbirth I will give them full details, but I imagine, and certainly hope, that most of you will be finding life so exhilarating and full you will have decided to have no babies at all, ever, and be queuing up at the sterilization clinics, where fortunately the wait is long, and natural childbirth, the Leboyer method, and other male plots against the labouring female the last matter on your mind.
But let me quote further from the section on ‘Midwifery’, here in my encyclopedia. We are dealing with puerperal convulsions — still a major reason for death in childbirth today. The cause is high blood-pressure, and the main work of our ante-natal clinics is to detect it, and cure it before labour starts. Otherwise, now as then, the mother goes into convulsions more severe than in epilepsy, ‘in regard to deformity suppressing anything the imagination of the most extravagant painter ever furnished’, and dies. But the Georgians had their own view of it.
It is most frequent in large towns, and in those women who lead the most indolent life: hence it is to be found in the first circles of fashion, in preference to others, and there is one grand circumstance which has great influence on its production, that is, a woman’s being with child when she should not. Being obliged to live in a state of seclusion from society for some months, perhaps, she reflects and broods over everything which relates to her situation, and which gives her pain: she recollects she is not to enjoy the society of the babe she has borne, but on the contrary will be obliged perhaps to part with it for ever. She is afraid of her situation being known, and that she shall be considered an outcast to society. In
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