Tea at Trianon: A Most Vital Piece of Advice for Young Women

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, June 17, 2022

A Most Vital Piece of Advice for Young Women

From The Daily Mail:

As many as half of divorced people in the UK report in surveys that they regret it. But the mood that it’s better to cut and run is catching, and in a culture of high divorce rates even marriages that last will run the risk of being undermined. With wedding vows no longer truly binding, and marriage accepted as impermanent, couples become less confident in their relationships and the institution as a whole changes in ways that no one could have imagined. But reform of divorce laws was not the sole cause of the death of marriage. They formed part of a suite of factors, the most important of which was the contraceptive pill.

The Pill – along with the decriminalisation of abortion, which provided a back-up option – ended the taboo on pre-marital sex. From the 1970s onwards it became much less common for women to wait until marriage or engagement before having sex. In theory, they still had the choice to refuse, but in practice it became much harder to do.

‘It often seemed more polite to sleep with a man than to chuck him out of your flat,’ said the social commentator Virginia Ironside, reflecting on her past. ‘Armed with the Pill, and with every man knowing that, pregnancy was no longer a reason to say no to sex. And men exploited this mercilessly. Now, for them, no always meant yes.’

Thus motherhood became a biological choice for women – but that also meant fatherhood became a social choice for men. Before then, only the most flagrant cad would refuse to acknowledge and provide material support to his children if he was in a recognised relationship with their mother at the time of conception. (Read more.)