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Political correctness in speech is nothing new. The idea is to avoid giving offense to anyone who defines himself or herself or itself or themself as a victim whose delicate sensibilities and esteem of personhood could be trampled by hearing inappropriate syllables.
That notion was common in polite society a century ago.
Victorian women were trained from birth to function as
frail creatures who, if they heard a suggestive word, would
faint dead away on the spot after uttering a shriek
followed by Fetch the smelling salts.
Thus in mixed company, a bull was a gentleman
cow.
When it was time to serve chicken, you asked for
white meat or dark meat, because breast
and
thigh
would offend any proper women at the table.
Piano legs boasted embroidered anklets so that gentlewomen
would not suffer offense from disgusting thoughts.
How far did this extend? Mollie Dorsey Sanford was part
of the 1859 gold rush to Colorado. She was tough enough to
handle Indian confrontations and to cook for 20 miners. But
when a lad tried to describe the location of a
rattlesnake's rattle to her, she said you mean the end
of the tail?
and he blushed and stammered and said
yes, the T-A-I-L.
Perhaps the most advanced manifestation of this prudery was practiced by certain bookish Victorians who, when shelving their volumes, refused to allow a book by a male author to sit next to one by a female author.
This method of avoiding impropriety leads to some odd questions. What happened when a female author published under a masculine pseudonym like George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) or Ellis Bell (Emily Bronte)? Was it safe to put an Oscar Wilde next to a Lord Byron, or would the resulting licentiousness stain the previously unsullied shelves?
Nowhere can I find the answers, and yet, the Victorians might have been onto something here. It came to me a couple of weeks ago during some summer cleaning. Martha had decided it was time to re-organize our bookshelves, and though she did most of the work, I was occasionally summoned.
Is this Economic, Political and Military History of
17th-Century Prussia something you picked up at a garage
sale, Ed? And where on earth did this Harold Bell Wright
collection come from?
No, I hadn't been to any garage sales, and I hadn't
bought any Harold Bell Wright. I've never seen those
books before. I don't know where they came from,
I
pleaded.
Well, I know I didn't bring them into the house,
either. So where did they come from?
I promised to look
into the matter.
My research began with friends who also keep quite a few
books. They have the same problem. One, trained in physics
during his jejune days, offered a theory: I suspect
there's a critical mass for books. If you have just a few,
they just sit there on the shelves. But once you pass a
certain point -- I'd guess it's about 2,000 books -- they
start to fission, and you find books everywhere.
Why don't you write up a grant proposal, and we'll
figure it out? The way I see it, a book constantly emits
letters and paper particles. When there are just a few
books, this literary radiation is harmlessly dispelled into
the atmosphere. But when there are many books packed
together, the paper rays and typerons begin to collide and
coalesce, and presto, books appear.
However, he proposed no methodology for testing this hypothesis, and so I didn't bother with the grant application. Instead, I asked some other people.
It's simple. Books breed like rabbits every time the
lights go out,
one woman explained. Every morning,
you'll see frisky little paperbacks perched in odd places.
They were scampering around in the dark, and then froze
when the lights came on. Every night, those hardbacks are
being fruitful and multiplying.
I love books,
she continued, but I just can't
take care of all of them. I try to give the extras to
people who'll provide good, loving homes, but they're
starting to lock the doors and pull down the shades when I
walk up with another box of books.
Meanwhile, my little paperbacks grow into hardbacks
and begin to breed themselves,
she concluded. They
reach maturity quickly, and I think the gestation period is
short -- maybe a couple of weeks. Multiple births could be
pretty common. Any, books breed like crazy, and there's
just no stopping them.
Or is there? Would the Victorian method of sexually segregated shelving prevent volume venery and consequent over-population?
Those plastic slip-covers that libraries use -- do they allow textual intercourse but deter conception? Can you arrange books for selective breeding, or do they find their own mates? Is there anything like Norplant or a literary vasectomy?
We need some answers, and quickly. Last week I hauled surplus books to the library, to the used-book store and to a neighbor holding a garage sale. The next morning, I found more tomes that no one remembers acquiring. Is it the stork, or were the Victorians onto something here?
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