Tag: children

A Victorian-esque Baby Shower Toast

About a year ago I co-hosted a baby shower for two friends, one of whom teaches history with me. To guard their privacy, I will rename the couple Leo and Julia Sterling, partly based on yesterday’s and today’s names of the day at BehindtheName.com, one of my favorite character development tools. The fake surname came from a new tool that I will have to add to my list: the name generator.

Because this speech fits into my recent dive into nineteenth-century medicine, sex education, and medical history in general, I thought that I would publish it here.

Gilded-Age-medicine-history
Read more about why cocaine for surgery and heroin from the Sears Catalog was actually a step up for the history of medicine.
Victorian childbirth and child-rearing: A Toast

In the division of labor that produced this shower, my fellow co-hosts chose me to say a few words because of my extensive experience in childbirth and child-rearing. [Ahem, no.]

I thought that I would start with a language Leo and I both understand: history. I sought advice from Victorian England, which as we all know is really the apex of inclusivity, equality, and morality. [More laughter because, yes, this is ridiculously untrue.]

I first took a look through Letters to a Mother, on the Management of Herself and her Children in Health and Disease, Embracing the Subjects of Pregnancy, Childbirth, Nursing, Food, Exercise, Bathing, Clothing, etc. etc. with Remarks on Chloroform. The chloroform was for the mother, not the child, to help her remain “in a state of quiet, placid slumber” throughout birth, just like Queen Victoria. That sounds awesome. Dangerous, maybe, but awesome. [Edited later: According to her physician, “The chloroform was not at any time carried to the extent of quite removing consciousness.” So less dangerous, but probably still awesome.]

Nineteenth-century-bottles-chloroform
Various bottles of chloroform dating from 1801 to 1910, courtesy of Wellcome Images at Wikimedia Commons.

This book also warns us not to make the baby’s room in the basement of the house, so—Leo? Julia?—I think we’re good there. In other research, the Boston Medical Journal does warn of the “intemperate use of fruit,” and I am not sure what to tell you to do with that piece of information.

Master-Baby-painting-mother-fanning-infant
Master Baby by Sir William Quiller Orchardson, painted in 1886 and now housed in the Scottish National Gallery. Digital image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Woman’s Worth; or, Hints to Raise the Female Character is maybe a better fit for us, especially for Julia’s interests. It seems to know of her love of “the blandishments of the theatre [and] the excitements of the dance,” and it mentions the option of committing “the charge of her child to dependents and servants” so that she preserve time for all her interests. This sounds good to me, as well; but in the same pages, the book advises that a parent’s influence is essential in the child’s character development. For no matter the “attractiveness of children, there are in those young hearts the seeds of evil,” including “dark deformity, headstrong passions, and vicious thoughts.” I think all of the educators in this room are nodding their heads.

Is proper education the answer, you wonder? The Rearing and Training of Children cautions that reading “is generally begun too early,” so maybe you will just have to throw away all those children’s books you’ve received, including the ones from us.

Cover-Tale-of-Peter-Rabbit
This is the cover of the 1902 first edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which currently makes an appearance in my WIP, Sugar Communion. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. For a more updated read, I can tell you that the Hallocks’ favorite gift books to give are: The Monster at the End of This Book, Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and The Story of Ferdinand.

The manual continues: “As for committing prose or verse to memory, the practice, good enough in some respects, is much abused. Children will remember what they know and feel interested in, and knowledge should come to them easily, sweetly, and naturally.” Leo, I think your students would like you to pay particular attention to this point. There is “no necessity for any part of education being made irksome.”

Tell that to this American Thomasite, Mary Scott Cole, who is pictured with her class in Palo, Leyte. Photo from the University of Michigan Bentley History Library.

But, frankly, I don’t think any of these manuals are helpful to us. History has failed me. What else can I draw upon? Well, I have raised three dogs from puppies, and I treat them all like my children. In that case, I cannot stress enough the importance of crate-training. The general rule of thumb is that your new furry bundle of joy can be left in his crate about an hour at a time for each month of age. Also, freeze-dried liver and pigs’ ears are particularly effective training treats and sure to be your baby’s favorite, especially if we are to avoid that nefarious fruit.

Wile-E-dog-pig-ear

Wait, has none of this been helpful?

Okay, well then let me say what we all know: Baby Sterling will be raised by two amazing parents. It has won the womb lottery. There is a reason that so many of us are here, that we seek Julia and Leo out in the Dining Hall or at faculty functions (and, yes, Leo, it is not just Julia we look for but you too). We are honored to be by your side as you start this new stage of your life. Know that there are many people in this room from whom you can seek support, comfort, and company. I just wouldn’t recommend asking your department head for advice.

bottles-of-chloroform
Bottles of Chloroform photographed and shared in the Creative Commons by Kevin King, via Wikimedia Commons.
Bibliography

Brown, William C., ed. The Mother’s Assistant and Young Lady’s Friend. Boston: David H. Els, 1841. Accessed August 23, 2019. http://books.google.com/books?id=65NQAQAAMAAJ.

Caton, Donald. What a Blessing She Had Chloroform: The Medical and Social
Response to the Pain of Childbirth from 1800 to the Present. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. EBSCO eBook Collection (53042).

Conquest, J. T., M.D., F.L.S. Letters to a Mother, on the Management of Herself and her Children in Health and Disease, Embracing the Subjects of Pregnancy, Childbirth, Nursing, Food, Exercise, Bathing, Clothing, etc. etc. with Remarks on Chloroform. London: Longman and Co., 1848. Accessed September 15, 2019. http://books.google.com/books?id=ACdlAAAAcAAJ.

The Metropolitan Working Classes’ Association for the Betterment of Public Health. The Rearing and Training of Children. London: John Churchill, 1847. Accessed September 15, 2019. http://books.google.com/books?id=o_MDAAAAQAAJ.

Woman’s Worth; or, Hints to Raise the Female Character. London: H.G. Clarke & Co., 1844. Accessed September 15, 2019. http://books.google.com/books?id=vmtjAAAAcAAJ.

Sugar Sun series glossary term #26: aswang

Sugar was such a greedy crop, drinking the lifeblood of the soil like the aswang demons that peasants feared.

— Under the Sugar Sun

With the popularity of the Twilight series—or, let’s get old school with Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles—I am surprised that more writers have not widened their paranormal worlds to include the folk traditions of the Philippines. Though legends vary, the Aswang Project website has come up with three common characteristics of aswangs in them all:

  1. The aswang’s diet consists mainly of human liver and blood;
  2. It has an unholy preference for unborn children; and
  3. It is also known to prey upon children and sick people.

Um, did you notice number two? Aswangs have been blamed for miscarriages and stillborn babies all over the islands. Scholars say that Spanish Catholics spread the aswang legends to vilify the female midwives and folk healers, called babaylans, especially those in the interior of the southern islands. As this website describes:

When they know of a pregnancy . . . they would land on the roof of the pregnant woman’s home, and, trying to remain undiscovered, dig a hole to get inside. Once close, they use their razor-sharp teeth and their tongue that can stretch out as a thin wire to drink the blood and eat the fetus through the mother’s belly button . . .

Even worse, there is a related creature called a manananggal, who is a beautiful woman by day, but at night she detaches the upper half of her torso, sprouts bat-like wings, and flies around with her guts hanging out, looking for victims.

manananggal_small
A manananggal as pictured at Florente Aguilar’s guitar project site, Aswang: Tagalog Song Cycle.

The aswang legends are particularly popular in the Western Visayas region, near where the Sugar Sun series is set. In fact, when Silliman University in Dumaguete opened their first dormitory in 1903, people thought it was haunted with these very creatures.

You may be wondering, how are aswangs created in the first place? What is their origin story? Getting bitten, like by a European-style vampire, is not going to do it. (You would just be dead, I think.) In the Filipino version, the dying aswang vomits up a small black chick—as illustrated below—which the aswang-to-be must swallow. Waiter, check please.

aswang-black-chick
Image from Erik Matti’s “Tiktik: The Aswang Chronicles,” found at the AswangProject.

In European folktales, like those of the Brothers Grimm, the big bad wolf is eventually punished for eating children. But the victims of aswangs get no such justice. (Maybe because carrying a child to term and then actually delivering it has been the most dangerous thing a woman could do for most of history?) This is very dark stuff. I don’t write novels this dark, but someone should. I cannot imagine an aswang hero, but maybe that’s my lack of imagination.

Featured image from sweet00th on DeviantArt.