At the weekend, I spent some time with a friend whose grandmother recently died in her nineties. Born at the beginning of the 20th century, she was old enough to remember both world wars as well as the historic decision to grant women the vote. But the thing she used to get really animated talking about was the invention of the washing machine. That, according to my friend's grandmother, was the event which really changed her life.
Which got me thinking: if I had to choose between giving up the vote and giving up the washing machine, which would I choose? The answer, I fear, is that I would give up the vote. I hate to say it but there you go. I suppose you could always pay someone to do your laundry for you (or indeed have a wife) - but what if you couldn't? Ultimately I'd hand over all the power in the world to free myself from scrubbing my smalls all the lifelong day.
Posts
12 comments:
Forget the smalls, think towels and sheets, and worse. I have done enough hand-washing in my time to know that were I the one to have been scrubbing Joaquim and Sebastian's dirty nappies these past four years they would have been in disposables all along.
I guess the point is that the women who fought for the right to vote didn't do their own (or anyone else's) smalls!
Given that I have four children who generate an horrific amount of laundry, I think I'd have to go with the washing machine too... Though my principles are screaming madly at me (I do live up the road from the hospital where Emily Davison was brought after she threw herself under the horse)
OTOH, as always being greedy and wanting things both ways, maybe we could have used our vote to change the law so that men could wash the smalls too... (actually mine does, but then he puts the wrong things in the tumbledryer, so perhaps these things are best left to women - although that's probably his cunning plan to ensure I don't ask him again.)
www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_osnos?yrail is all about how the West doesn't get Chinese nationalism. It's complicated, obviously, but one of the things it is about is that many Chinese have stuff for the first time in their lives, and they would rather have stuff and no democracy than risk democracy taking away their stuff. As they point out, lots of 'democratic' (and democratic) countries have been woeful at providing their people with stuff. And then there's Singapore, where people have most of the economic, legal and social freedoms, but not the political ones.
Lazy democrats (not like us) don't get that the non-political freedoms are at least arguably as important as the political ones, because we've always had both and tend to assume they all came together. But almost all mature democracies had the legal and property freedoms for a long time before they got the political ones. Blah blah, I wax dull, etc. But it's a good feature.
My mum did all our washing by hand until I was 13. That would have been 1983.
Not sure if she bothered to vote though. She was probably too busy washing my smalls.
Good article - thanks Mil.
Scott having just put on my fourth wash of the day, I am in awe of your mother. Mine reckoned her washing machine was the most important thing she owned. I am inclined to agree...
Milly fascinating point. Joking aside we probably are too casual about both our liberties and our possessions
Nah, I only have to look at George Bush to convince myself that universal suffrage wins over hotpoint any day. But I would probably be extremely manky extremely quickly. Manky but emancipated! Yeah sister.
My mother in law had neither washing machine, nor fridge, nor disposable nappies while her 5 under 6's were being born and growing up. Imagine. The horror. We don't know how good we've got it.
As a coda to all this... I put out the (5th lot of) washing out last night, went out swimming in bright sunshine, came home in raging thunder, so of course it's now all sinking. I think I'd trade in being green for the luxury of a tumbledryer.
So that's me. Dead shallow. No vote and no saving the planet, just as long as I can wash (and dry) my smalls...
er... lesson not to write in a hurry, I of course meant my washing was soaking.
This reminded me of a quote from Laura Ingalls Wilder (she of the "Little House on the Prairie" books) from her later years, "Aladin with his wonderful lamp had no more power than the modern woman in her kitchen".
Although the women's suffrage movement in the UK was pretty classless, and there were as many mill girls and housewives involved as there were society ladies, just to point out to Peter j.
Post a Comment