Hi, ladies!!
Magnolia, I’m ashamed I formed a rash conclusion about your contribution. But when I heard from you that the day was your HD’s birthday by chance, I thought your sincerity could reach him.
How have you enjoyed this summer? From tomorrow, my kids and I are going to Osaka for one week, and so I’ll skip this Blog for a while. They are really looking forward to playing with their cousins, even though in our short stay. My sister-in low is engaged with a cosmetic business at home, and she will make my face more smooth, beautiful, and young-looking, by her massage.
So, have a happy week ahead. See you!!
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Dear Cherry and friends,
Hello.
Magnolia, thank you for telling us how Gloriosa enjoyed talking with you.
I'm glad to hear she is fine.
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In Prochaska, I have encountered a lot of woman philanthropists who lived in nineteenth century England. Among them are Ellen Ranyard, Octavia Hill, Sarah Martin, Louisa Twining, Josephine Butler, and Francis Power Cobb, to name a few.
So far, I've finished reading to the second section of the second chapter. The first 2 sections of the second chapter convey 2 types of visiting which Christian women carried out: visiting the poor and visiting institutions.
As was discussed in “Christianity and Social Service in Modern Britain,” visiting societies were significant institutions where women actively worked as philanthropists. Women visited the poor to prevent distress and to promote social harmony. Visiting societies had to compromise with the government which enacted the New Poor Law Act in 1834. According to Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, the law required people able to work to enter a workhouse in order to receive public assistance. That is, it was designated to avoid offering outdoor relief. However, woman visitors might have been opposed to it, saying, “charity was to begin where public relief ended.” (p.152) Without guidelines, some women handed money to the poor in the beginning. In time, most visiting societies published guide-lines or handbooks to stop such behaviors.
Prisons and workhouses were institutions where charitable women visited. One of the exciting stories was about Miss Sarah Martin who was a working-class philanthropist. Before her charitable activities were recognized as her respectable job, she made a living as a dressmaker. She visited a prison in Yarmouth regularly and read Scriptures to the prisoners. She first “read only printed sermons”, but later started to give a service with her own words. (p. 167) Her service was so stylish that it impressed a prison inspector who heard it by chance. Other woman philanthropists were inspired by her work and helped her. Some donated her to her schemes and she set up a fund to help discharged male prisoners. Moreover, the Yarmouth Town Council offered a grant and she became financially independent.
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Have a nice trip to Osaka, Cherry.
Good night, ladies.
Dear Cherry and friends,
Hi. How are you?
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Finally, I finished Prochaska's second book.
Charitable women appeared in various places to purify sordid society. Probably, for them our present society might be unbearably immoral. One of the most intolerable places for them was a brothel. Benevolent women visited prostitutes to rescue them. They sympathized fallen women. Women rescue workers persuaded prostitutes to flee to a refuge or to get a more decent job.
Threats of venereal disease to innocent wives were serious. The Contagious Diseases Acts, however, criminalized only women and required them to undergo a periodical medical examination. Josephine Butler and other social reformers campaigned against the Acts which represented “a sinister double standard of morality and an infringement of the individual liberty of women.” (p.206) Yet not all women rescue workers agreed upon this matter. Some thought that the Acts was effective to eradicate prostitution.
Miss Ellice Hopkins, a High-Church Anglican, was one of the ardent rescue workers. She had experienced in teaching at Sunday school, missions to navvies, and visiting pubs to preach temperance before visiting the dens of Brighton. For rescue workers like her, brothels were “dens of vice.” In spite of her considerable experiences in philanthropy, she was shocked by the first visit to a brothel. She felt as if she dashed herself “against a dead wall.” As soon as she finished the first persuasion and closed the door behind, she heard “shrieks of horrid laughter.” (p.198)
Rescue work succeeded when a prostitute was new at her trade and suffering from remorse. Passages from the Bible reinforced women rescue workers' ideals. When the Jewish leaders and Pharisees accused a woman caught in adultery, Jesus said, “only he who is without sin may cast a stone at her.” Nobody could not condemn her any more. Thus, Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you.” Woman philanthropists hoped to treat the weak and fallen as Jesus did.
Mrs. Butler and many other rescue workers referred to a part of the Gospel and Christ's conduct in order to find the words which expressed women's liberation. The last section of the second chapter and the conclusion argue that women's political activities emerged along with their charity. Women's suffrage movements, in particular, were supported by charitable societies organized by woman social reformers. They demanded the vote for women after facing obstacles which blocked their way to accomplish moral and social reform.
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It's lighting and thundering outside now.
Hope the sky will clear up tomorrow.
Hi, Cherry and friends!
I suppose you and your kids have been enjoying summer vacation in your hometown, Cherry. I remembered spending summer holidays at my parents’ house every year. But it ended at the time of examination hell age of the last grade of a Junior High school. My daughters began to be busy in attending summer course of cram school. That was an end of kid’s days. Until then all cousins of my daughters got together every summer holidays, enjoying long gorgeous free time at pool, on the beach, on the mountain, etc.
I am really missing those sunny days, smiling sunburned faces, a bowl of shaved ice strawberry. We, mothers were chatting all days at a beach lodge. Time is flying so fast. Please enjoy your precious time with your cute daughters, Cherry.
Well, Alice, what an avid reader you are. Prochaska’s story is interesting.
It is said that prostitution was the first women’s professional job on the earth, however, the situation involving this job was ever-lasting wretched one universally.A
Dear Cherry and friends,
Hello.
I'm reading Joan Perkin's Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England.
This isn't our summer homework. No, it's not. It's our autumn homework.
Joan N. Burstyn's Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood is the one I need to finish during summer. I'm just telling this to myself not to forget.
Although I have read only a few chapters of Burstyn's, I chose to read Perkin's because I wanted to read something from scratch.
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So far, I have come to the marriages of the Royal family. As an introduction, Perkin overviews what we can discover in this book. (Sorry for such a redundant expression.) The main concern of this book is seemingly how married women were deprived of legal rights in nineteenth-century England. Probably, Perkin wondered why quite a few Victorian women still took into account marriages seriously in the era when some enlightened women were realizing women's emancipation. In pursuing the answer to such a question, the book navigates us to a variety of social dimensions. It covers from class disparities on marriages to women's attempt on the legal reform of marriage.
A marriage might have devastated a woman's lot because the Common Law of England was feudalistic in those days. The first chapter describes the legal inequality between a husband and a wife referring to Barbara Leigh Smith(Bodichon)'s Brief Summary, in Plain Language, of the Most Important Laws of England concerning Women. According to her Summary, some legal statutes are surprisingly unfair. A married women could not administer the personal property of deceased relatives without the consent of her husband. In fact, she is not recognized as a person by Lord Chancellor. To explain how badly the law influenced married women's life, Perkin picked up some cases in which married women suffered from unhappy marriages. For example, Caroline Norton could not get divorced easily and lost custody of her children.
In the second chapter, Perkin illustrates royal marriages from the end of the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. The first unhappy wife is Queen Caroline. Her story sounds familiar to me because it's also in Princesses of Wales translated by Fujisawa-san. Queen Alexandra does not look as unhappy as Queen Caroline. She overlooked her husband's extra-marital affairs. The happiest wife is Queen Victoria without doubt. Respectable subjects sympathized unhappy royal wives and expected royal couples to “preserve with dignity the institution of marriages as well as the institution of monarchy.” (p. 49)
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It's time to go to bed.
Talk to you later.
Hello everyone.
Our insistence and stance
responding to Yamakawa Kikue's contribution 'the New Women's Association and the Red Wave Society’
With labour strifes recently getting substantial and hot, especially in Kobe, labour disputes at both Kawasaki and Mitsubishi shipyards were reported that they were getting ugly as time went by. Even I who am not directly concerned with them am getting strained by reading each letter about the cases in newspaper in the morning and evening. Today,one article says early morninng of the 14th(ambigious), a battalion of the 39 Himegi regiment was mobilized. It was in charge of an distinctive duty,cooperating with some hundreds police officers who have been sieging both the docks. I feeling sorrow and indignation, my imagination was stretched.
Hi, ladies!!!
Have you finished breakfast?
It is Saturday morning, and we finished up our meal and are getting ready for grocery shopping, which is our routine on Saturday morning. Actually I woke up at around 5:30 and got up at 6 and made pancakes for breakfast.
Last night the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics was held and aired around the world. Have you observed it? I did not see it, ‘cause I was too busy doing something to watch it.
This afternoon my husband is going out with two of his mates, and so I will have all the afternoon time just for myself. Probably I will prepare posters that I am going to use at my lecture meeting in Kumamoto.
Well, my precious friends, I’ve got to go. See you.
Hi, friends,
I've come back. Since my PC had something wrong, I had to have it reparied. Till now, I had been feeling very unstable and eneasy. I'm very sorry for not writing in the blog.
I watched a TV program on Japanese gymnasts for the Olympic games. I was moved by one of them who is 19 years old. In order to get higher score he reflected his performance and reorganize it by changing and considering the comination of the difficult skills. Reliability, validity and sureness should have priority as he takes part in the olympic as a team. He is very young but knows his role well.
I have a negotiation with starcat person. He says I have to wait for at least three months. Anyway I had a contract. I cannot wait to watch it!
Hi, everyone.
And now what is it in the present state of our women's movement? Ranging from ptoletariat women to bourgeoisie women, from the intelligent to the unintelligent, through women in every walk of life, what is women's campaign like on the status quo?
I believe pottential full in women themselves. It is because mainly, I cannot help but feel the capability is flooding, looking for where it is channeled into. As we hear about recent flutters in women's society, some women's comings and goings or rise and fall of respective women's camps, are these the events which endorce what I say? I am not comfortable that women who are obsesseed with authoritarian conception are sad and upset or become defiant. Not only it externally and conceptionally reminds me of something insipid as
terms of right and obligation are seen in law books, but also all movements must derive from real demands of those women who are concerned with movements. If not, I think it is unlikely that it is an animate and a meaningful crusade.
Dear friends,
Now I wonder in which way I should write on Ichiko Kamichika. She is very famous and some of you have a certain image of hers. Comparing with Masa Nakayama who had a rational and practical way of thinking, Ichiko was pure and even awakward with living as a new type of woman. Sakae Osugi requested her to be the one. The scandal with him and its aftermass grew Ichiko. If a politician has a scandal, his or her life as a politician should be shortened, whcih was not a case with Ichiko.
I found it very appealiing,
Thank you.
Dear Cherry and friends,
Hello.
Plum, thank you for sending us ESSAYS 2007. It's interesting to find what other members wrote about. I read 3 essays so far. The essay about Hiroko Katayama effectively exemplifies the argument about Japanese translators who enriched Japanese culture and literature. It's an intriguing connection between the two essays. Among many findings were the fact that the tragedy A Dog of Flanders (furandasu no inu) was written by a Victorian woman.
Not until reading Azalea's essay did I believe Japanese women won Voting rights thanks to the great effort made by Fusae Ichikawa.
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I've been finding facts about Victorian marriages, too.
Privileged women's privileged marriages amaze me. Upper-class women were not as oppressed as I had supposed. The Common Law was not the only law applied for upper-class women. If rich women wished, they could refer to the special law called Equity which allowed married women control her inherited or bequeathed property. It prohibited extravagant husbands from squandering money brought as a dowry. The eligibility to apply this law did not mean that they lost rights given by the Common Law. In the Common Law of England, a married women was acquitted of her debts and her husband had to clear off them. Caroline Norton who lost custody of her children exercised this right to survive.
While reading about upper-class women's marriage, I often thought about novels like Thackeray's Vanity Fair. Its heroine, Rebeca (Becky), herself was not from upper-class but she behaved like a nobility. Her ambition to achieve upward mobility on the social ladder made herself acquaint with noble people. Upper-class women who appear in the novel took rank beside grandes dames or great ladies whose influence on others' marriage was powerful as Perkin discusses. (p. 78) Becky's husband lost chance to gain a fortune because his aunt thought their marriage was not appropriate and refuse to leave him her legacy. His aunt was a typical great lady.
It also suggests that Victorian great ladies believed a well-matched couple should be equally balanced in terms of their social classes. Perkin also argues that upper-class women exerted influences not only on their family affairs but also on politics.
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Good night.
Hi, ladies!!!
Yesterday afternoon while I was working on my project of making posters for my lecture meeting in September, I got a call from Jonathan. He said that He had just got back from Hawaii and that he had decided to take a teaching employment offer from a community college, which is quite near his parents’ house.
He sounded excited, saying that the community college was progressive and excellent for his work and that he was leaving on 20th for Hawaii to live. That means he is going to quit his work at university in Toyota, which surprised me enormously. Who is going to take over his classes in the fall semester???? Anyway it has nothing to do with me and it’s useless to worry about it, but nonetheless it concerns me a bit, as a former teacher at the same university.
He asked me to write a letter of reference, which is not a problem at all, and I would be pleased to that. He also said that he would like to see members of his discussion group to say goodbye, depending on their availability. Unfortunately I would not make it, but many of them would like to get together to see him off, I believe.
Peach wrote something about Starcat, which is a cable television company. The other day she came to my house to discuss her essay for the last time, and we also had a chat about BBC, CNN, and other channels including Mystery Channel and LaLa TV. She had no access to any of these channels at the moment although she used to have some interest in them, and her children really want to have a cable television installed at home. Then, I said that since Peach was an English teacher it would be much better to be exposed on current world news in English through BBC or CNN. She agreed with me.
Peach appeared to be on the starting line of her new life, whatever it means. She has guts, but, perhaps, never had a chance of showing them. I hope she will grow up linguistically, at a rather faster pace. Peach, work hard!!!
Well, I’ve got to go to an electronic appliance shop to get something I need to keep myself fit. See you soon, my lovely friends. Bye for now.
Hello, everyone.
Thank you, Alice.
Since somebody recommended me to read 'The New Women's Assoication and the Red Wave Society' written by Mrs. Kikue Yamakawa in the magazine Taiyo issued in July, I did. She is one of the senior who I always respect. As usual, I perused it with a great expectation. However, I was disappoined that I found only insult and antagonism among women over her distinctive clean cut inspiration, although there were connotations luminating us. For instance, she wrote with her hope ' I don't know what Fusae Ichikawa is and what she thinks, but she is generally reported to be solemn and practical.' Judging from these sentences and the whole article, I suppose her almost all impression toward the New Women's Association is derived from articles in the newspapers or rumors. As you know, it is a truism how much the coverage of newspaper or rumors from journalists are short to believe or irresponsible. If I could, I would like hear criticism and requests based on the facts about the association from her. It is good for Mrs. Raicho Hiratsuka, our association and, if I dare to say, Mrs. Yamakawa.
She should rethink that how much this sensitive issue would accelarate misunderstanding of many mean men as well as hamper progress of women.
Hello, Cherry and my precious friends.
I picked up an interesting phrase from "Women and philanthropy in nineteenth-century England".
The word charity itself was Greek for love, synonymous with Christ-like conduct. (p.11)
Beatrice Potter complained of the code of feminine domesticity that acted as a brake on her wider ambitions.( p.10)
Florence Nightingale felt an enormous sense of release when she finally left home to pursue a career in nursing. (P.11)
Girls who were better educated were more likely to be encouraged to take up some form of social service, while others, charitable work was the liberation from a routine of female existence. It was adventure.
Most female reformers hailed Christianity as an emancipating influence as it heightened women’s self-esteem and gave them a sense of place and direction.(p.12)
Christianity was thought to give enormous scope to woman as wife and mother and by extension, enormous benefits to society.
In other words, Christianity did not restrict womken to the role of domestic helpmate, there was God’s work to be done;outside the home as well.
Women were more likely than men to identify themselves with biblical characters. (p.17)Women had a rightful and important place in the charitable world.
Good night, my precious friends.
Hello, everyone.
What is our ideal society or a society we aspire after like? Needless to say, it is impossible to dipict it by only a word. If anyone imagines any society and the socity is envisaged on his or her whole character, I respect it. It is because I believe a good society is cultivated by diversified suggestions. From this viewpoint, I feel a pity that so called socialists are exclusive and narrow minded. As they are obsessed with one ism they believe, anything but socialism seems insincere to them. In a sense, I understand it but even if socialism was only one way to invite the society near to perfection, attitude intolerant toward anything but socialism would become one weak point. With this failure, I think it lacks a fundmental agent which forms next generation. Although I indeed recognize let alone socialism, anarchism, syndicalisme and guild-socialism as a theory give us various suggestions, when every ism is faced with real life, it has a defect which needs modification. I would like to esteem those isms. I hate coercion from ism the same as the one from bourgeois. People like us who run the every day life in destitution and live from hand to mouth are so busy that they not only can't buy a book they want to read but also can't afford to love their children, care about growing sprouts of vegetaion and feel joy sorrow and indignation keenly. For people who are obligated to live miserably, is a present society anything but absurdity? Instead of a contemporary society full of an ominous and absurd things, the people who requier society in which both men and women savour rejoice are ourselves who extremely feel unhappy now. I believe a force to realize a new social system in near future comes from our demands, stemming from our real life.
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