Hi, ladies!!
Summary: Questioning the ethic marriage
The Pre-Raphaelite movement revived in the 1850s and 60s, and anti- marriage movement was sought to be gaining ground. But opponents skilfully linked Socialism, free love and any criticism of marriage together, and thus many women stopped listening to advocates of women's rights.
On the other hand, the availability of easier divorce after 1857 confounded many of the sex radicals.
Annie Besant---famous women's activist and adovocate of contraception, approved of easier divorce but not of free love.
Libertinism have taken root in England and flourished in the 1860s, but Francis Newman thought that more often it was used as an excuse for the free indulgence of passion.
Beatrice Webb---she didn't approve of free love, but pointed out it was the subject of many popular theatre plays, and found difficulties in her Febian friends, H.G.Wells's experiment with free-er love affairs.
The Bloomsbury set---the most influential literary and artistic group, whose world was transformed around 1910. Vanessa Bell (sister of Virginia Woolf) gave the lead by proposing a libertarian society with sexual freesom for all.
...see you next!
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Dear friends,
It is a very beautiful day except that it is too dry. Plum, I remember the day when I read about your sister in your book and imagined the scene of you sisters studying together. I'd like to offer belated condolence.
Cosmos I imagine that your mother might be under pressure of beaing a baby boy like mothers in those days. How much time has changed!
My mother in law has a suspected lung cancer. She is told the result of the examination tomorrow. I cannot find any good words to her. I hope nothing is wrong with her.
Well, I've got to stop writing now.
Good night, my precious friends.
Dear Cherry and friends,
Hello. How are you?
It’s chilly but I enjoy seeing autumn leaves through the window during the day.
Last weekend, I stayed at Inuyama Meitetsu Hotel with people working at women’s centers and feminist activists. Most of them manage NPOs. Tsunagalet is also managed by an NPO called Sankaku Planet who became a contractor by tender. Nagoya city invites tenders once in a few years. We held a seminar after dinner. Interestingly, some people who attended the seminar were graduate students.
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I am reading Harriet Taylor Mill and John Stuart Mill’s essays these days.
Alice Rossi’s brief biography about John Mill is intriguing. Mill’s idea was progressive in those days. He argued about a struggle between the aristocrats and the other classes before Marx wrote class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Before Caroline Norton fought against her husband over child custody, both Mill and Taylor wrote essays on marriage and divorce (1832). The Mill biographers and scholars before the 1970s neglected the significance of Harriet Taylor. Rossi studied their writings and relationship precisely and concluded that Harriet wrote Enfranchisement of Women (1851).
Early Essays on Marriage and Divorce first appears in this anthology. While John Mill insisting on the dissolubility of marriage referring to happiness, Harriet Taylor presents similar argument by arguing how marriage could oppress women like other social institutions.
Hi, ladies!!!
It’s Thursday, December 4, 2008, today, and it’s been quite warm and very pleasant, hasn’t it?
I am very sorry to say this, but I was very, very angry this morning. Another relative of my husband, virtually one of his cousins, phoned and asked him to look after her parents, since she and her sister could not. The caller is a medical doctor living in the USA and her sister (I don’t know what she is doing) lives in Paris. Their parents live in Tokyo, but actually their father is in a nursing home and their mother is very ill in hospital.
The caller, a younger daughter, remarked so impudently that she came back to Japan just for a short time, temporarily according to her statement, to see her parents. She and her sister live abroad and therefore could not be lawfully responsible for the rest of the lives of their parents and asked my husband to be a legal guardian for their parents, who were my husband’s uncle and his wife. They have no other sisters or brothers.
Her blatant request on the phone got on my nerves and I got so angry with her as I could not imagine. Is that something to talk about on the phone? It’s a serious matter to discuss dying parents, isn’t it? They don’t realize how significant this type of problem is. I was simply stunned and got more and more outraged. My husband’s relatives are all crazy, I believe.
I just don’t know how to describe my irritation and exasperation. It took a while to calm down my furious anger. My husband’s relatives are so irresponsible and evasive. I want to be involved as little as possible in their immature behavior and attitude.
Sorry about my complaint. Just ignore me, my lovely friends. Have a delightful Thursday evening. Night, night…
Hi, ladies!!!
It’s Friday, December 5, 2008, today, and it’s been wet since early morning but rather warm, hasn’t it?
Peach, have you heard anything about your mother-in-law’s cancer test result? I really hope she does not have any caner in the lungs as you do.
I’m very sorry about what happened to me yesterday. Probably it was disgusting to hear such a nasty story. So, today I will let you know a wonderful piece of news concerning a student in my university library class that I heard from her the other day.
Do you remember the speech script entitled High School Students and Part Time Work I listed in this blog, perhaps, a month and a half ago? She prepared that script and participated in an English speech contest sponsored by Nagakute International Exchange Association or something like that on November 30th and came third after two Aichi Prefectural University students who came first and second respectively. According to her explanation, they came first and second because some of the contest judges were Aichi Prefectural University professors.
There were 7 contestants including a junior high school student and an elderly housewife, who she remarked was definitely older than her. My student stated that these young and elderly contestants had memorized all their speeches and made a speech without looking at their scripts. It was amazing, she exclaimed.
If you had attended the talk show held at TCLC, you would have seen her and would recall that small short-haired lady who made a speech before our main guest toward the end of the tea time. Yes, she is so powerful and full of energy. Brilliant…
I was tremendously happy about her excellent news, and we gave her a big hand in class after she told us how she came third in the contest.
It seems to have cleared up now, my precious friends. I have to get ready for going to see my dentist. Bye for now. Good-bye to you all…
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