A Woman’s Work at Her Needle Is Never Done

“Work” with respect to girls and women used to be synonymous with “needlework.”  Not just the stitching of samplers, but “plain sewing,” the making of shifts and shirts, aprons and babies’ caps for members of the family.   Those tasks were not relegated to the servants: princesses and queens were supposed to cheerfully perform  this necessary work as well.  Virtuous female characters from the Bible and classical literature were cited as examples.  It was said the daughters of Queen Charlotte were expert at tapestry work and fine embroidery of all kinds.

But times were changing according to the anonymous author of The Little Needle Woman: Or the Pleasures of Work.  Published with the Approbation of The Princess Royal of Lilliput, for the Entertainment of the Ladies of Great-Britain and Ireland  (Gainsborough: H. Mozley, 1792).  He or she exclaimed:

Needle—work, the cares of domestic affairs, a serious and retired life, is the proper function of women; and for this they were designed by Providence.  The depravity of the age has indeed affixed to these customs which are  very near as old as the creation, an idea of meanness and contempt; but then what has it substituted in the room of them?  A soft indolence, a stupid idleness, frivolous conversation, vain amusements, a strong passion for public shews, and a frantic love of gambling.

If dexterity with the needle was as important as claimed above, then surely this little pamphlet has illustrations of obedient little girls hard at work.  Just one–the frontispiece shows a girl sewing while she watches the baby in the cradle.  But there is also a picture of a girl practicing the piano while her mama watches, which directly contradicts the rant in the introduction.…To be honest, there are more illustrations in 18th-century children’s books of boys mistreating animals in than of girls sewing.  Only one I’ve found in the collection so far is The Brother’s Gift, which was first published by Francis Newbery in 1770.  The story is straightforward enough.  Kitty Bland returns home from boarding school “perfectly spoiled,” having picked up affected manners.  Like most boarding school misses, she can’t spell correctly, write neatly, read aloud nicely, or, most important of all, sew carefully.  In spite of all this her older brother Billy loves her too much to let this continue  and explains kindly why it is to her advantage to learn all these things—and stop spending so much time staring at herself in the mirror.  Here she is hard at work.And here is her thimble.

If Kitty applies herself, she might one day produce a map sampler like this one in the Victoria and Albert Museum.Or aspire to needle paintings  in worsted like Mary Linwood, who exhibited her full-size copies of old masters in a  gallery on Leicester Square in London for decades.  Here is one after the famous animal painter, George Stubbs. 

 

 

Spring-Heeled Jack, Victorian Superhero and the Remake by Philip Pullman and David Mostyn

In 1837,  there were reports in south London of an alarming  figure assailing unsuspecting Londoners walking out late at night. This was the beginning of the urban legend of Spring-Heeled Jack,  the masked boogeyman who made sudden appearances (often by leaping great distances) and fills criminals with terror, often credited by experts in popular fiction like the great collector Joseph Rainone, as a forerunner of Batman. By 1900 Jack was quite the dandy…

Cotsen has just acquired a complete run of 1867 penny-dreadful, Spring-Heeled Jack, The Terror of London by the Author of TURN-PIKE DICK, the Star of the Road.  The first attempt to create a narrative about this cryptid ran to 48 numbers in 576 pages set in two columns on brittle paper.  Each 12-page number was illustrated with a captioned picture 175 x 130 mm.   The covers may have been removed when the set was bound into one volume.  If the printer and publisher left any traces, it would have been on the wrappers, if there were any.   Unless they were too embarrassed by the high consumption of brandy, Sir Roland Ashton, the aristocratic villain’s “hard and cruel heart,” the virtuous young lady with blond tresses and pearly teeth warding off loathsome advances, crime fighters named Catchpole and Grabham, etc. in issue after issue being ground out for the greedy consumption of impressionable young men.

One hundred and twenty-odd years later Philip Pullman wrote a tongue-in-cheek homage illustrated by David Mostyn to high Victorian scary silliness illustrated for the chapter book crowd.  Author and illustrator assume that their readers will be able to follow a penny dreadful spoof, having picked up the conventions which still shape all kinds of popular fiction.

But how does this modern Spring-Heel Jack resemble the 1867 original?

He appears in odd places at odd times.His legs have extraordinary strength.

He is a protector of women, although it’s easy to see why he would frighten them.He always gets his man, some times by unorthodox means like a storytelling contest. The grossest one wins.But they don’t really look the same…. Some contemporary accounts say he wore what sounds like a white body suit, but penny-dreadful Jack appears to be wearing no clothes on most of his escapades.   Occasionally he has a cape with a shaped hem.   He wears a mask with horns, but no hat could contain all those coarse, long locks.  His eyes glow and he breathes fire. The critical difference is the footware.  Mostyn’s masked crusader is shod in knee-high boots à la Superman; penny-dreadful Jack is barefoot throughout.It pays to go back to the source!