An amusing article. I can sympathize with then, but I am more fond of the Victorian period. I think the decline of European civilization started in 1914 still the Thirties, Forties and Fifties were a lot better than what followed.
women who really do live in the past
By Diana Appleyard
The credit crunch, a knife crime epidemic - no wonder so many of us are sick of the 21st century. Most of us just grumble, but some women have taken radical action to escape what they see as the soulless grind of modern life. Meet the ‘Time Warp Wives’, who believe that life, especially marriage, was far more straightforward in the Thirties, Forties and Fifties…
Comments from strangers can be pretty bitchy, though, because people just don’t like anything that’s out of the ordinary.
The Thirties was a much more moral time and there was a real camaraderie between people.
I try to escape from where we are now and rarely read newspapers because I find today’s world so depressing.
The pace of life today is so hectic and I think there is so much pressure on women to be like men. It is all wrong.
I love to wear dresses and skirts, look immaculate and be treated like a lady. My home is entirely decorated with 1930s furniture, wallpaper, carpets and ornaments.
Interesting article...I prefer the Victorian or Edwardian ages myself, but this is interesting.
A couple small quibbles...the 1950s lady’s kitchen is so color-coordinated it is kind of painful to look at. And she makes the following comment, which is totally anti-Kinist:
My despair at the modern world is one of the reasons why we haven’t had children.
Ones despair at the modern world is precisely the reason one should have children. Other folks’ children will feel obligation only to their own parents, not to you...who will care for you in your old age? Will there be others who look like you in the future? Will our world be overrun with other people’s children?
The other two ladies do not mention children, either.
I do, however, respect their intentions and care for their husbands, and their devotion to their time periods are remarkable.
Fascinating Womanhood, by Helen Andelin, was a very popular book with women in the 1970s. While the author was Mormon, the principles seem to apply to Christian women as well. They have a website with books for sale and many archived advice articles, it’s worth a look.
There are Yahoo groups celebrating the feminine, they have Ultimate Feminity in their names and refer to a book by Sandra Schindler, Ultimate Femininity, and provide mentoring of ladies by ladies (sorry, guys, no poking around there).
Other proponents of the classic feminine have been mentioned in our forum previously.
Yes that is very sad, I did note that lack of of children in the story.
Laurel Loflund - 09 August 2008 05:12 PM
Interesting article...I prefer the Victorian or Edwardian ages myself, but this is interesting. A couple small quibbles...the 1950s lady’s kitchen is so color-coordinated it is kind of painful to look at. And she makes the following comment, which is totally anti-Kinist:
My despair at the modern world is one of the reasons why we haven’t had children.
Ones despair at the modern world is precisely the reason one should have children. Other folks’ children will feel obligation only to their own parents, not to you...who will care for you in your old age? Will there be others who look like you in the future? Will our world be overrun with other people’s children? The other two ladies do not mention children, either. I do, however, respect their intentions and care for their husbands, and their devotion to their time periods are remarkable.
I am not a big fan of this period in part because many of the degenerate cultural elements that are destroying our civilization were already in place. Yes I have seem the Fascinating Womanhood site before. My despair at the modernworld makes me want children and to keep them hidden away in an un-modern sanctuary, I like the idea of a nice Victorian House with a ten foot brick wall around it.
My despair at the modern world makes me want children and to keep them hidden away in an un-modern sanctuary, I like the idea of a nice Victorian House with a ten foot brick wall around it.
Was that brick wall ten feet tall or ten feet thick?
There is something a bit artificial about this fascination with the 30s, 40s, and 50s, particularly evident in the avoidance of children. The emphasis on the proper role of women as wife and homemaker is all to the good, but it appeared that they were deliberately going to great expense to recreate an anachronism. This is more fantasy that real life as I see it.
Ten feet tall, height is what one usually means when gives a measure in relation to a wall. I fear I grew up in the urban wastelands of Southwest, so I like walls and wrought iron fences. Nice tall walls and wrought iron fences with sharp spear points on top.
FrSam - 09 August 2008 06:48 PM
Was that brick wall ten feet tall or ten feet thick?
All too true.
FrSam - 09 August 2008 06:48 PM
There is something a bit artificial about this fascination with the 30s, 40s, and 50s, particularly evident in the avoidance of children. The emphasis on the proper role of women as wife and homemaker is all to the good, but it appeared that they were deliberately going to great expense to recreate an anachronism. This is more fantasy that real life as I see it.
Laurel,
You are very right.
Laurel Loflund - 09 August 2008 06:52 PM
It seems mixed fantasy and nostalgia for what was truly been lost. Sad that they have no idea of why marriage was important. Personally, I have no quibble with the desire for good, Christian relationships between husbands and wives, and traditionally understood femininity. Still can’t quite deal with that color-coordinated kitchen, though… :-)
As I said before I am not a fan of the 1950’s it was liberal age in which out society degenerated quickly something that most people forget, because it was better than what followed. The 1950’s gave us the “art” of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, Beatniks, desegregation, epidemic juvenile delinquency, decline in morals, hideously ugly Architecture, and the modern degenerate “consumer culture.” The good parts of the 1950’s were leftovers from an earlier age.
The 50’s are not any sort of a paradigm for Kinists. Modernism ruled the 50s. It was the period during which liberalism tightened its grip on public and academic life. We have fond illusions about family life in the 50s due to the TV shows we’re all familiar with.
The 1950s woman they profile mentions that she feels:
It may sound silly, but living like this really does make me happier - as though I’m existing in one of those old-fashioned TV shows where everything is always wonderful.
“Time Warp Wives” purposefully without children......... that makes as much sense as if my EMT son were to say, “Yeah, I’m doin’ good riding the ambulance, but I DON’T do patients...too much mess and hassle! Keeps the ambulance cleaner and I help the environment by saving fuel not driving to the hospital!”
You are SO right, Kinswoman. These women are trapped in fantasy.
God bless,
Laurel
now what if a teacher said they liked coming to school and writing lessons, but didn’t like conveying the knowledge to students...oh, wait, they call those administrators...hehe
You are very right and that is a most apt analogy.
kinswoman - 11 August 2008 12:36 PM
“Time Warp Wives” purposefully without children......... that makes as much sense as if my EMT son were to say, “Yeah, I’m doin’ good riding the ambulance, but I DON’T do patients...too much mess and hassle! Keeps the ambulance cleaner and I help the environment by saving fuel not driving to the hospital!”
Laurel,
All to true… sadly I have seen some women who spend a lot the time reading about children and parenting and they fill the spare bedroom in their house with toys and children’s books, but the never get around to having even one child.
Laurel Loflund - 11 August 2008 04:00 PM
You are SO right, Kinswoman. These women are trapped in fantasy. now what if a teacher said they liked coming to school and writing lessons, but didn’t like conveying the knowledge to students...oh, wait, they call those administrators...hehe
I lived through the 40s and the 50s (not the 30s), and they were much better times to my mind than what we have today. I’m sure that there were the beginnings of today’s problems present at that time, but overall, they were much more sane and reasonable times.
I recall as a young child when my parents were very careful to tell me about the fact that the married daughter of some family friends was getting a divorce. They did not want me to react too badly to Lois’ divorce and look down on the entire family because of it. They explained that “it just had not worked out.” Does anyone do anything like that today with their children? I really doubt it. They would be busy all the time! That was the first divorce any of my family had ever encountered, about 1947.
I would much prefer to raise my children in the 1940s and 1950s as opposed to today. It was a much more moral, safe, time when there were expected norms of behavior that were upheld and people followed the social conventions to a very significant degree. Today such behavior would be looked upon as aberrant. It was a healthy time for America, and it is a shame that it has been lost.
Good points, FrSam. I lived through the 1950s (in a much smaller form than I am today) and was a teenager during the 1960s. Even during the much-touted societal revolution of the 1960s, we were quite concerned with how we behaved in class and out. The hippies made a big impact because they went against those strong societal norms (no, folks, hate to disappoint you, but I was not a hippie). Shock value, so to speak.
Wish fewer folks had found those shocking ways less fascinating...they’ve become the behavioral norm.
