The Victorian Chaise-Longue

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Scritto magistralmente pur mantenendo uno stile semplice, ho trovato questa piccola storia una perla ben eseguita.

Sanitariums for recuperating tuberculosis patients in the Swiss Alps featured chaise lounges that resembled a hospital bed/chaise cross. The connotation, while initially masculine, became entirely feminine, and associated with weakness and illness. It, therefore, was a blend of meanings, both connoting high class and an access to leisure time, as well as the feminine “constitution”. The legacy of the chaise lounge in gendered understandings of health and mental health continues.A long legacy of prescriptive and sexist science remains at the foundation of psychiatric medical treatment for women. From the first diagnosis of hysteria to the present-day disparities in mental health treatment, the tradition of medicating women’s emotions has held constant. Within this context, the line between empirical treatment and medicating the lived experiences of women grows dangerously thin. Treatment of psychiatric symptoms in women (by mostly men, until a few decades ago) has always been connected to ideas about sexuality and domesticity. Whether “over-sexed,” “repressed,” too attentive to their children, or too withdrawn, psychiatric diagnoses often centered on women’s perceived domestic failures. The chaise lounge was part of a system of treating women’s dissatisfaction and reasonable responses to a unequal society as a mental illness, as well as catering to a view of women as fundamentally weaker than men. This is the story of a young married, pregnant woman named Melanie in the 1950s with TB. She goes to sleep on a Victorian chaise longue and wakes up in 1864, an unmarried young woman named Millie who had incurable TB and a shameful secret. In her efforts to prove who she is, her identity becomes more and more linked to the past. Will she ever be able to return? Just who is she, really? Millie or Melanie? Is there a difference?

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The comparison merely came up because both authors seem to base their ideas on a similar question about what time really is, and how we live in time. Claire Platten studied Fine Art at University, had a successful career in marketing and graphic design before re-training as an upholsterer. Whilst working on furniture commissions, Claire also works on her own collections. Working with modern and traditional techniques, Claire puts her experience with design, colour and craft to produce unique pieces of furniture.

This only adds to Melanie's confusion as she tries to make sense of her situation: the unknown, combined with eerie familiarity. "There came a new dread, or an old fear long known and endured." Laski was born to a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals: Neville Laski was her father, Moses Gaster her grandfather, and socialist thinker Harold Laski her uncle. She was educated at Lady Barn House School and St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith. After a stint in fashion, she read English at Oxford, then married publisher John Howard, and worked in journalism. She began writing once her son and daughter were born. As Melanie realises that she is trapped, effectively imprisoned in the body of a dying woman, she begins to doubt various ‘truths’ about her existence – more specifically, her identity, her sanity, and perhaps most troubling of all, her ability to return to the life she once knew.Sounds mysterious? Well, it isn't. It's just that the plot is one thing if you read it with the expectation that everything in the book happens just as it is described. If, however, you begin to doubt the narrator, you may start to wonder what is really going on. Dijo: Quizás Milly Baines murió aquí. Entonces, sin duda Milly Baines está muerta, dijo sin emoción, Milly y Adelaide y Lizzie, todas muertas y podridas hace rato. Este cuerpo que habito debe haberse podrido inmundamente, esta funda de almohada debe de ser un pedazo de trapo, esta colcha debe de estar apolillada, crujiente y pegajosa por los huevos de las polillas, cayéndose a pedazos mugrientos. Todo está muerto y podrido, el jugo de cebada contaminado, el camisón raído y tirado, estas manos, este cuerpo entero pestilente, podrido, muerto. Se estremeció y supo que se estremecía en un cuerpo muerto hacía mucho tiempo. Se le puso la piel de gallina, y era una piel que se había puesto verde y licuefacta y se había convertido en polvo húmedo junto con la húmeda madera pútrida del ataúd. Here’s a description of a chaise longue from Wikipedia (and it has pictures of it from the olden days… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaise_... ): an upholstered sofa in the shape of a chair that is long enough to support the legs. I will not reveal anything else about the plot (and the above is pretty much revealed on all general descriptions of the book), other than that the plot takes on a different shape depending on how you approach it. Yes I did like it. It’s not a book I would fall in love with, but it’s a fascinating and strange little book. This was the second book I read that was published by Persephone. They publish books from the early 20th century that were written by female authors and have gone out of print or have been forgotten. I find the books they publish interesting so far and want to continue to discover their hidden gems.

English journalist, radio panelist, and novelist: she also wrote literary biography, plays, and short stories. In 1928, famed architect Le Corbusier collaborated with fellow Bauhaus cohorts to create a sleek, metal-framed chaise that offered the sitter unparalleled flexibility. A user could tilt the frame either to raise up the head and lower the feet or vice versa.Charles and Ray Eames, the famous designer duo known for their eponymous molded chairs, created distinct Fiberglass shell chaise lounges with tubular steel legs—a look that really embodies that distinct mid-century modern style. It is not very common to see chaise lounges in homes these days, but may be something you see in an expensive hotel room. While it may seem to have outdated function, there are many ways it can be used now. The chaise lounge can make for the perfect reading nook, with a standing lamp positioned right beside it. Tall transom windows bring natural light to the foyer. It opens into the living room complete with a leather sectional and a contemporary chaise lounge. The book improved towards the end, but it was too late. I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I did the children's book Charlotte Sometimes, which had a very similar plot but the added bonus of a theme song by the Cure (to be fair, this one came first). I think I would've appreciated The Victorian Chaise Lounge more if I'd read it as a kid. The concept was one that would've resonated more with me then, and the effective descriptive passages would've affected me more, instead of seeming overwrought. A lot of things about this book that bug me now wouldn't have bothered me at all when I was much younger.A well-known critic as well as a novelist, she wrote books on Jane Austen and George Eliot. Ecstasy (1962) explored intense experiences, and Everyday Ecstasy (1974) their social effects. Her distinctive voice was often heard on the radio on The Brains Trust and The Critics; and she submitted a large number of illustrative quotations to the Oxford English Dictionary. Antique chaises are treasured for their craftsmanship, beauty, and historical significance. They reflect the design trends and aesthetics of the specific time period in which they were created. Much of the book is stream of consciousness as Melanie tries to make sense (or adjust) to what has happened, beginning with the obvious ‘is it a dream?’, to considerations of (if it isn’t a dream) how one might convince others that you are not who you appear to be. As the book progresses it become apparent that there are mysteries concerning the body/life our protagonist seems to be inhabiting, and the novel becomes increasingly claustrophobic as these are revealed. I felt that Laski captured the changing moods of Melanie very well as she navigated varying emotions of wonder, fear, frustration and empathy with her old and new self, whoever her ‘self’ might be. This is written in a style that epitomizes (to me at least) the beautiful precise, peculiarly ‘English’ prose of the 1950’s, which helps ground the book in its own time of writing, which I think adds to its sense of containment.