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Thursday, March 10, 2005
AURORA, a four-plate, 4 by 6-inch mezzotint, was inspired by my early morning outings on Tomales Bay, and yes, my 16-foot rowboat is called “Aurora.” The print, in an edition of 25, is available for $150.00.
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Wednesday, March 09, 2005
CRY UNCLE III – Euphemisms
Somewhere someone has undoubtedly listed the social prohibitions of the Victorian Era. The language taboos alone, if anyone had dared print them, would have filled a book. In the days of my grandparents and my parents, certain words simply were not spoken.
My Uncle Don remembers being strongly chastised by his parents for using the word “pregnant” when talking about someone’s dog.
The Victorian mores may have taken deeper root in Puritan American than in England itself. Certainly our country’s unforgiving and unrelenting Protestantism would augment the fertile ground, and Victoria’s influence continued to flourish long after her death in 1901. So even though Don was born three years after that year, the taboos continued. They could be foolishly restrictive. I remember my mother whispering with a visitor about a mutual friend who had cancer, and this was well into the 30s.
Even when she was dying of cancer in 1979, my mother usually referred to it as “the Big C.”
So when Don filled his obituary with clinical details on the cause and symptoms of his sister’s uterine cancer, he knew he was violating her code.
Under that code, bathroom functions and, of course, sex were not spoken of outside a doctor’s office.
My older brothers, once in a department store with our grandparents, had become bored as young boys will, when my grandmother asked if they “wanted to go someplace.” They both nodded with enthusiasm, and Grandmother led them to the bathroom.
It sounds quaint now, but it was how respectable ladies of that day talked.
Divorce and suicide were not discussed voluntarily. Venereal disease never. Yet somehow my grandmothers’ generation coped with these realities, and perhaps did it very well. Who’s to judge?
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Somewhere someone has undoubtedly listed the social prohibitions of the Victorian Era. The language taboos alone, if anyone had dared print them, would have filled a book. In the days of my grandparents and my parents, certain words simply were not spoken.
My Uncle Don remembers being strongly chastised by his parents for using the word “pregnant” when talking about someone’s dog.
The Victorian mores may have taken deeper root in Puritan American than in England itself. Certainly our country’s unforgiving and unrelenting Protestantism would augment the fertile ground, and Victoria’s influence continued to flourish long after her death in 1901. So even though Don was born three years after that year, the taboos continued. They could be foolishly restrictive. I remember my mother whispering with a visitor about a mutual friend who had cancer, and this was well into the 30s.
Even when she was dying of cancer in 1979, my mother usually referred to it as “the Big C.”
So when Don filled his obituary with clinical details on the cause and symptoms of his sister’s uterine cancer, he knew he was violating her code.
Under that code, bathroom functions and, of course, sex were not spoken of outside a doctor’s office.
My older brothers, once in a department store with our grandparents, had become bored as young boys will, when my grandmother asked if they “wanted to go someplace.” They both nodded with enthusiasm, and Grandmother led them to the bathroom.
It sounds quaint now, but it was how respectable ladies of that day talked.
Divorce and suicide were not discussed voluntarily. Venereal disease never. Yet somehow my grandmothers’ generation coped with these realities, and perhaps did it very well. Who’s to judge?
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