Wednesday, August 31, 2005

a manifesto of sorts

I want it known here and now that I began blogging before they were even called blogs. This blog, adolescently called "Tortured Souls, Inc" was a wonderful piece of self-indulgence that I have no desire to imitate on this site. Instead, I will use this blog to further the illuminating cause of the Edwardian Sisterhood.

What is the Edwardian Sisterhood? You may very well ask. It is a loose collective of people who would rather have lived in a time of outhouses and kitchen maids, of elegant dresses and delightful boots. I make no claim to being a technophobic person, as I am, after all, using a computer at this very instant. I do idealize, however, the slow pace of life, the lost art of letter writing, and men tipping their caps to ladies.

It is very easy to blame most of this nostalgia on E.M. Forster and Jane Austen (who is not an Edwardian, but honestly, who can resist her?), as well as my lingering frustration towards printers and computers in general. I think of the Edwardian Sisterhood as more of an ideal - completely unattainable, as all worthwhile ideals are. I can't even claim to act as an Edwardian would, as the events at a certain lake in Saskatchewan indicate.

In all honesty, this blog may very well become nothing more than a place to rail against my M.A. Thesis (on Austen, naturally). But there are always ideals...