"“It is amazing to me,” said Bingley, “how young ladies have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are.”
“All young ladies accomplished!  My dear Charles, what do you mean?”
“Yes, all of them, I think.  They all paint tables, cover screens, and net purses.  I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time without being informed that she was very accomplished.”
“Your list of the common extent of accomplishments,” said Darcy, “has too much truth.  The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse, or covering a screen.  But I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general.  I cannot boast of knowing more than half a dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that are really accomplished.”
“Nor I, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley.
“Then,” observed Elizabeth, “you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman.”
“Yes, I do comprehend a great deal in it.”
“Oh! certainly,” cried his faithful assistant, “no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with.  A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, all the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”
“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
“I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women.  I rather wonder now at your knowing any.”"

The preceding conversation is a well known passage from Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice.
It always seemed to me from my reading, that in those days it was the general goal of all young ladies to become accomplished women, or rather, to make as good a match as possible, and in order to accomplish that, they sought to be accomplished.
Such being my supposition, I began to wonder what had happened to that goal. You don't really hear women described as accomplished much any more, or at least not in that sense, and so far as I can tell, finishing schools are practically obsolete. There doesn't seem to be any particular standard that women are expected to meet these days.

I wanted to know if the idea of an accomplished woman was replaced, or simply dropped.

So I asked people what they considered the traits of an accomplished person/woman to be. Unfortunately, I did not go about it in the most scientific manner and was not very consistent in my questions. For example, I did not always just say 'accomplished', but also sometimes used the word 'educated', as I suspected that might have been the term that replaced it. As a result, my answers may be a little different than they might have been if the survey had been done professionally, but it served my purpose.
Most people appeared never to have considered the idea and did not have an immediate answer. When they had thought about it, the majority gravitated wholly to the term 'educated' and found the answer fairly straightforward.
I also wanted to contrast the standard now with it's 19th century counterpart, but I found that such information was not nearly so easy to find as I expected. Outside of Jane Austen's works, I have yet to find a description of an accomplished young lady. I am sure there are more out there somewhere, and I just need to find them.

Since this is a much bigger task than I anticipated, and since I am getting stuck, I have decided to break it up into smaller posts. If anyone has anything to add or any further remarks, I would be happy to receive them!

Everyone else seems to have given their opinions on the new Les Miserables movie and now I shall add mine to the number! First off I must say that I didn't actually watch the whole thing. I gave up on it round about when Marius first saw Cosette. The cinematography was starting to give me a headache with all the shaking and close-ups, and there was some very unnecessary bits in one or two scenes.That much is all that I know to be unique to the film, the rest of the decisions might have been made by the people who made the book into a musical in the first place. It seemed as though they were trying to keep as much as they could from the book but I found it so rushed and incomplete that they might as well have left it out. The music was quite good though, of course. The songs have been sung and played and repeated countless times by both myself and my younger sisters. At the End of the Day is one of my favorites.

This ended up being shorter than I was planning and maybe a bit disjointed as I started writing it a couple of weeks ago but then broke my flow of concentration and forgot anything else I was going to say about it. Oh well. That's my take on it, and I don't plan on finishing the movie. :)

Random thought for the day...

I like to think that if I were an animal I'd be something cool like a wildcat or a wolf, but realistically I'm afraid I would probably be a gorilla or a baboon. :(

When Anna was learning to talk her brothers taught her their own version of what the colors on a traffic light meant until they had the following Q & A session on an almost daily basis.
"Anna, what does a green light mean?"
"Go!"
"What does a red light mean?"
"Stop!"
"What does a yellow light mean?"
"Floor it!"

Once again back to our European adventures. I decided I wouldn't write as much this time, partly because it takes so long, partly because it can be a bit of a dry read, and partly because it's been almost a year since the trip and I'm starting to forget the dry details anyway. If you have any questions just leave them in a comment below and I'll answer them as best I can :).....

Day 5 - Part 2- When I left off last time we we enjoying our selves on Palatine Hill. From there we crossed over to the forum, and what do you think we saw first? Why another arch of course!!

This one was the Arch of Titus. We were getting a bit thirsty by this time, but the only water to be found on site came from a couple of old fountains....

The Basilica of Constantine

I believe this is the temple of vespasian

The House of the Vestal Virgins

The Rostrum where Mark Antony and Cicero would have spoken from.

We went inside the Curia(Senate House) which housed a number of old roman artifacts

The original floor that all those Roman senators would have walked on

Temple of Saturn

And another arch!! This one was the arch of Septimius Severus

 We left the Forum and climbed up the stairs behind Capitol Hill

 There were some older men dressed up as Roman soldiers on the grand staircase in front of Capitol Hill. I don't remember what they said to us but I seem to remember the one on the left asking us where we were from and then remarking on all the crime in the US.

Victor Emmanuel Monument

 From there we made our way towards the Vatican via the Pantheon

A glimpse inside the Pantheon

Yes, that big red truck is driving down that narrow street through the pedestrians and cafes. Okay, well not through the cafe but right by it.

We stopped in a little shop to buy some water....

 They sold some enormous pasta!!

We crossed the Tiber River by the Mausoleum of Hadrian, usually known as Castel Sant'Angelo (seen below)
 

There were a few rather intriguing street performers around the Castel Sant'Angelo who dressed themselves up to look like statues or inanimate objects and held very still. They never made a sound and only moved when you dropped money into theirs cups at which they would move in a stiff way as if they were only machines. This one would bow his head very slowly.

 Then We came to the Vatican...

A picture of the Vatican taken, I believe from the border of Vatican City.

The lines to see the Vatican were incredibly long

After leaving Rome we drove around the Umbrian countryside for several hours trying to find the place Mom had found for us to spend the night, eventually arriving around midnight after stopping at a bar and asking for directions. Immediately below is a picture of the area we were driving through and below that are pictures of the place the next morning, which was really quite lovely and I wish we could have stayed longer.

I recently answered a poll regarding feminism. They asked whether or not I considered myself a feminist and why I did or did not. I do not consider myself a feminist and I've been meaning to do a blog post on my reasons. The following is a much expanded version of my response and my take on women being integrated into the infantry.

I feel like modern feminism is essentially a glorification of men. They tell us that we are inferior if we aren't doing everything that men are doing, even though we were created with different strengths and weakness from them. The irony of feminism is that what they're doing is achieving the exact opposite of their goal. They are the ones who are spreading the belief that to feminine is to be inferior. That if, for instance, a woman chooses to be a stay-at-home mother she is inferior. Why would it be such a shameful thing to fulfill the role of a woman?

"As women, we must not be swallowed up by a culture that tells us there's no real difference between men and women, nor can we succumb to a society that demeans women for their feminine distinctiveness. Rather, let us always keep in mind that every woman's journey is to live her feminine genius in an original and unique way, so as to bring into being that which never existed before—human life, spiritual life, and the fullness of emotional and cultural life."
-Katrina Zeno, Every Woman's Journey

It seems to be a childish "anything you can do I can do better" mentality that is now trying to defeat our military just to satisfy their own egos; to win this imagined battle of equality.The fact is that women are physically weaker than men. The fittest, strongest women would be broken in the infantry.
This is an excerpt from an article written by a female marine(A company grade 1302 combat engineer officer with 5 years of active service and two combat deployments, one to Iraq and the other to Afghanistan, who has participated in and lead numerous combat operations.).

"...By the fifth month into the deployment, I had muscle atrophy in my thighs that was causing me to constantly trip and my legs to buckle with the slightest grade change. My agility during firefights and mobility on and off vehicles and perimeter walls was seriously hindering my response time and overall capability. It was evident that stress and muscular deterioration was affecting everyone regardless of gender; however, the rate of my deterioration was noticeably faster than that of male Marines and further compounded by gender-specific medical conditions. At the end of the 7-month deployment, and the construction of 18 PBs later, I had lost 17 pounds and was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (which personally resulted in infertility, but is not a genetic trend in my family), which was brought on by the chemical and physical changes endured during deployment. Regardless of my deteriorating physical stature, I was extremely successful during both of my combat tours, serving beside my infantry brethren and gaining the respect of every unit I supported. Regardless, I can say with 100 percent assurance that despite my accomplishments, there is no way I could endure the physical demands of the infantrymen whom I worked beside as their combat load and constant deployment cycle would leave me facing medical separation long before the option of retirement. I understand that everyone is affected differently; however, I am confident that should the Marine Corps attempt to fully integrate women into the infantry, we as an institution are going to experience a colossal increase in crippling and career-ending medical conditions for females."

Her entire article and a short interview can be read and viewed here: http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created-equal


I'm not saying that that there is anything wrong with being a soldier or a career woman. The Proverbs 31 woman engaged in production and trade. The problem I see is that today feminism is essentially all about men and how to be as good or better than a man when instead our focus should be on how to be the best women we can be in whichever occupation we choose. 

When Elizabeth was about 7 years old, she and Stephen went over to visit Miss Sharon, their next door neighbor. Miss Sharon had a book about ballet that she was showing them, and on one the pages there was a picture of a male ballerina. I assume that you all know the sort of ...er "pants" in which they are typically dressed, and this particular man was dressed no differently. Little Elizabeth's reaction? "Miss Sharon I am SCANDALIZED that you would show me that!!" Poor Miss Sharon was so afraid of what they might say when they told their mother that she went over and explained it all to her to make sure there wasn't any sort of dreadful misunderstanding.