| This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. The introductory post is here. My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. |
CMP#146 Chimneysweeps and Cupids, again
| Last December, my research into Kitty, a Fair but Frozen Maid (the riddle which Mr. Woodhouse tries to recall in Emma) was published in Persuasions online, the journal of the Jane Austen Society of North America. I also published some pages and blog posts with more background information about Georgian love poetry and riddles. My research is intended to refute the theory that the Kitty riddle about a chimney-sweep is actually a very dark and scurrilous poem about venereal disease and deflowering young virgins. So I won't recap all of that here, but I have come across some more riddles about chimney-sweeps, which I want to share because it gives us more context into what people of the long 18th century said about chimney sweeps. As we know, the job of sweeping chimneys was miserable and sometimes fatal. Poorly fed, unwashed, overworked, dressed in rags, they were a daily sight on city streets. Many sympathetic poems and ballads were written about them. But Georgians, being Georgians, could joke about anything. The blackness of chimney-sweeps was a frequent topic for humor, of course, and the same terms--"sooty," "dusky," even "negro"--were used interchangeably for them. |  Jolly, light-hearted Christmas card |
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