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The Third Son of a Duke

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In all the investigation of Melbourne of 1915, the more I realised that if we never go looking, we will never find out what history is, what was good, what was bad, what were the prevailing attitudes of the time.

IT gives credence to a few odd sayings I’ve heard over time, ones that are viewed with a great deal of distaste these days, but fifty, seventy, eighty years ago, they were part of what we grew up with.

The thing is, women had it very tough.  That saying you hear a lot, even these days, is ‘it’s a man’s world’, and to a certain degree it is.  Back when I was looking, women could only work until they were married, when it was expected they would stay home, and, dare I say it, attend to the man’s needs.

I have a schoolbook of my mother’s, which she used in 1942, and the back pages are filled with notes on how she was supposed to attend to her husband’s needs.

I showed it to my granddaughters, and they were totally gobsmacked.

This is the thing about the past, and it can be a problem for writers who, if they do not know about the past, can make some fatal flaws in their writing, assuming today’s standards applied back then.

Also, back then, society was very judgmental about a woman’s virtue, and there was very little she could do without society frowning on her or turning her into a pariah.  This was much the same until the sixties, when a lot of that went out the window.

Back in 1915, wow, straight laces and very well behaved. 

However, I suspect, what went on behind closed doors was a different story.

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1995 words, for a total of 41245 words.