[ SECRET POST #5486 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5486 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 14 secrets from Secret Submission Post #785.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

For the main part, I agree with you. It was definitely a skill. However, I think part of it comes from the fact that women were taught mostly skills that were either about socialising dancing, foreign languages) or about being beautiful (having impeccable taste, dancing again) or creating beautiful things (embroidery, singing, music, poetry, painting....).

None of those are worthless skills. But if your entire life is about being beautiful, pleasing others, marriage and birthing children, then by God, it must have felt like a cage at times. Particularly if you were of a nature that wasn't inclined to any of those past times.

Living in the 22st century, even imagining being forced to live like that feels suffocating.

[(Anonymous)]

*21st century, I'm not messaging from the future

[(Anonymous)]

That's what you want us to think, anyway. 👀

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT *shifty eyes*

[(Anonymous)]

That is a shame, it was reassuring to think that humanity made it to another century.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, you're describing the plight of a very specific class of women. I guarantee the sewing techniques of a lower class woman weren't the product of a stifling cage of beauty, and more "having any nice things at all". It was much MORE of a skill, to vastly more women, than a pretty pasttime.

[(Anonymous)]

I am definitely describing the plight of upper class women. However, my interpretation of the OPs secret was that it was about characters that are typically upper class women.

[(Anonymous)]

the real problem is, I say as someone who wishes they could hand embroider, did this concept of "women were only taught things for making pretty objects and being pretty objects" exist for 4000+ years or was this something the Victorian age came up with as a trope, and now we think it was real and need historians to tell us that no, no, it was never like that, someone fed you a trope and you bought the lie?

I don't know, because I don't know very much about historical literature and commonality of tropes. we suffer from having to only get an idea of what people's thoughts and attitudes were through whatever writing survived, centuries or millenia, and if all we have is a handful of really terrible novels, how can we assume that people in 1405 or 1130 or BC-fucking-E had the same ideas and attitudes as we do now? given how much has changed over time (and what hasn't, lmfao dicks carved into Egyptian walls) I feel like we're missing out on this whole understanding of our ancestors and are relying on some bullshit made up by Victorian writers because their writing has survived mostly intact.

[(Anonymous)]

If you read the diary of Lady Murasaki, which is a first hand account of life at the Emperor's Court during the Heian period in Japan (12th century) - then you'll see that no, that cage was not just made up by Victorians.

[(Anonymous)]

SA *11th century sorry

[(Anonymous)]

ooh thanks for the reminder, that's on my list of things to check out. and an excellent reason why, too.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT It is very worth reading. (:

[(Anonymous)]

But again, a life led by a small number of extremely wealthy, high-born people.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT Yes, and? Is the point somehow less valid? This is what OPS secret is about. Not many peasants learning swordmanship full stop, let alone as an alternative to embroidery.

[(Anonymous)]

A very small group of women (and to a lesser extent men) have led this life for a long time, whenever their society enabled a very small, very wealthy group of people in power. Women were to be married off for alliances, and while there were certainly women who had military, diplomatic and artistic skills and got to use them, the main thing they were supposed to do was fit in to their new family (while still representing the old family) and have sons. But that's an extremely small group of women - the majority were working, and the majority of those were working on farms.

[(Anonymous)]

Please see my responses above about why I commented about upper class women on a secret that seems to be about upper class women.

Although tbh, the grinding poverty most people lived in combined with the necessity of marrying and having kids to be 'normal' in society's eyes.... yeah that's not a great cage either.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly. There's nothing wrong with the skills themselves, it's the fact that those kinds of skills were the only ones that women were allowed to learn.

[(Anonymous)]

Precisely.

[(Anonymous)]

It depends on the time period of course, but in the medieval era women of the nobility weren't just taught "pretty" skills to show off their beauty, they were also taught how to manage and run a household and servants, how to oversee the accounts, make simple medications and maintain a stock of treatments for your household, etc. Sewing and needlework belongs to that class of skills, it was largely practical because you'd be sewing peoples' clothes. "Creating beautiful things" was likely a secondary part of that skill.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't say just pretty skills. I also mentioned social skills, which these domestic ones fall under.

Foreign languages, etiquette and how to make niceties were important in their world too. Women were an important part of general everyday diplomacy and alliances.

To me, having domestic skills doesn't make that life any less of a cage though.

[(Anonymous)]

Those are still all domestic skills, though. Women couldn't be blacksmiths or hunters/trappers or carpenters, things like that. The only skills they could learn were ones that had to do with either being pretty and cultured or managing a household.