[Homestead] 18th century farm woman
bob ford
bobford79 at yahoo.com
Mon Dec 15 23:13:03 EST 2008
Maybe someone will enjoy, I thought it was half way interesting ; In this 3 page story,she 'inteprets' an 18th century farm woman at "one-room, wood-beamed farmhouse at the Claude Moore Colonial Farm,"
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Excerpt:
A Colonial Dame
My brief, inspiring career as a historical re-enactor.
By Emily Yoffe
Posted Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008, at 7:06 AM ET
Colonial Emily "Chastity Crump" YoffeVerily, your humble fervent did in the guise of the Humanae Cavia Porcellus fojourn to the paft, to the year of our Lord 1771. Prithee, allow me to declaim of my adventure in the colony of Virginia, and my difcoveries.
The reigning fantasy in many girlhoods is that of becoming a princess, presiding over a palace, dressing in satin, wielding a scepter. I always imagined myself as a settler, sitting by a cozy fireside, dressing in homespun, wielding knitting needles. So the tiny one-room, wood-beamed farmhouse at the Claude Moore Colonial Farm, a living history site set in 1771, with its dirt floor, hearth, table, spinning wheel, and sleeping loft, sent me back both to this country's beginnings and my own—it was the perfect manifestation of my childhood dreams.
.... As a historical interpreter at the farm, the foundation of my transformation into an 18th-century woman was the foundation garment called "stays—the fabric and bone device that tied around the upper body.
This was not the wasp-waisted, heaving-bosom look of a Scarlett O'Hara corset. Instead the torso in stays becomes almost cylindrical, one's front flattened, one's back held straight. Good posture was a matter of propriety, and both Colonial boys and girls were put in stays. Males were released around age 7, but females spent their lives in them. I expected stays to be a sartorial prison. Instead, I enjoyed them. They made my movements deliberate, my posture impeccable. I felt as if the past was swaddling me...........
http://www.slate.com/id/2206449/
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