Historical fiction and science fiction overlap when Poul Anderson writes about time travel. Anyone walking through London in 1894 would see:
dusty, battered hansom cabs;
gentlemen wearing bowlers or top hats;
sooty navvies;
women wearing long skirts -
- and would smell smoke.
When Anderson lists these details on p. 24, he does not so far go beyond anything that a Londoner of that period would perceive. Incidentally, I understand that there is a narrative style that does not mention anything that a viewpoint character would take for grant. Thus, having been informed that a Londoner was out on the street, we would not be told that there were hansom cabs, gentlemen, navvies or women. Only the unusual, e.g., an obvious foreigner or a policeman apprehending a pickpocket, would be described. Be that as it may, I prefer to receive a fuller account of what the pov character sees, hears etc.
Anderson lists Manse Everard's reflections:
the hansom cab carrying him and Whitcomb is "...not a tourist-trap anachronism, but a working machine...";
there is more smoke than in the twentieth century but no petrol fumes;
the crowds are not actors;
his grandparents are young couples;
Grover Cleveland is US President;
Victoria is Queen;
Kipling is writing;
the last American uprisings have not happened yet.
Of course 1894 Londoners can know who is President, who is Queen and that Kipling is writing but the significance is completely different for a time traveller.
10 comments:
Of course, a crowd in 1954 would be rather odd to the eyes of 2022, as well.
There's more than one way to time-travel, and one benefit of reading older fiction is that it gives you new eyes to see your own environment.
One thing I've seen over my own lifetime is the decline of the skirt. In 1953 it would still have been at least a little unusual in London (or New York) to see a woman in trousers on an ordinary city street.
A generation earlier, still more so -- I've got a WPA Guide to Los Angeles written in the late 1930's and it mentions women wearing pants as one of the strange sights common in LA, along with affluent men not wearing ties, but loose open-necked colorful shirts instead.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Like you, I prefer the fuller descriptions Anderson gives us, even in stories set times where some might think they would not be necessary. I'm also reminded of complaints by some readers of how such detailed descriptions slows down the action in the stories of Anderson, Stirling and Tolkien. Complaints I disagree with!
Mr. Stirling: True, films and newsreels from the early 1950's do look quite strange compared to what we now take for granted. Truthfully, I think many women LOOK better wearing skirts!
Ad astra! Sean
I had to Google 'WPA Guide'
I guess a roughly knee length skirt or kilt is reasonable in warm weather, but in cold weather anything other than pants is stupid/crazy.
When there is a fairly rigid law or custom that this is men's clothing and that is women's clothing, the women's clothing is usually less practical & an impediment to movement. Perhaps both a symbol of & a means for the oppression of women?
Kaor, Jim!
I disagree, in part. E.g., I think many 1950's clothing styles for women were both practical AND becoming. Nothing like the hideous mummy wrappings women have to put up with in many Muslim countries.
Ad astra! Sean
And hats. When I was born, nearly everyone in the Western world wore a hat when outside, and women wore them inside too in many settings.
Nowadays, people generally only wear hats as part of a uniform, or for practical reasons (in very sunny locales, or caps in cold weather)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Hats too have mostly faded away, which some trace to people imitating how JF Kennedy did not wear hats.
I too have found it sensible to wear caps in Hawaii or Florida, because of that kind of sunniness.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the JFK thing is a historical urban legend. It was already happening -- he was just an early adopter. The first discernable beginnings of the trend date to the 1930's, though probably it began a bit earlier.
It's likely that the change in attitudes towards sun-tans may have played a role. Traditionally, they'd been a mark of lower-class status (or of some occupations like soldiering).
By the 1920's, they were starting to be a status symbol of sporty leisure -- even for women, which was a -big- change.
And that in turn was a product of urbanization, and of how many people now had 'indoor' jobs.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I sit corrected, then, about hats. But the decline of hat wearing had not yet gone that far in the early 1960's. I had in mind that famous picture of Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's assassin, being shot. All the men around him were wearing hats or police caps.
I was never a worshiper of sun tanning. All that does is damage your skin and increases the risk of skin cancer. And I know of too many women, with naturally beautiful fair complexions, ruin their looks that way.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: sun does damage the skin, esp. if your ancestors evolved in places that are cloudy and misty a lot with long dark winters.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That's certainly the case with most of my ancestors! So I try to minimize needless exposure to hot, bright sunshine. Not for me the peculiar passion so many have for oiling themselves up and then roasting in the sun.
Ad astra! Sean
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