Law Mama

Equality,” “prejudice,” “race” itself — how can you have mid-nineteenth-century characters use words like those without anachronistically evoking the connotations they have for us? To many of Lincoln’s contemporaries and even his allies, “equality”still evoked alarming echoes of the French Revolution. To speak of “race equality” implied not just that people should all be treated alike, but that the races really were morally and intellectually equivalent. That was an extreme and dubious proposition to all but a few radical Republicans, like Thaddeus Stevens.

— Geoff Nunberg on how connotations have changed since the 19th century and how those connotations are alluded to in Tony Kushner’s screen adaptation of Lincoln. (via nprfreshair)

Reblogged 2 months ago from nprfreshair 113 notes

In Defense of the Happy Girl

newyorker:

image

Sasha Weiss considers why people find Anne Hathaway, Hollywood’s “happy girl,” to be so annoying: “Little girls learn very quickly to modulate their excitement if they want to be acceptable… Anne has somehow managed to retain that bright look, and many people would like to wipe it off her face.”

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/XFpWAi

Photograph by Jason Merritt/Getty.

I’ve been feeling like the vitriol against Anne Hathaway is so overwhelming she’s a sympathetic figure again.

Reblogged 2 months ago from newyorker 2,036 notes
nprfreshair: Over at the London Review of Books is a piece by Hilary Mantel about “Royal Bodies” — from Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette to Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana and Dutchess Kate. It is a great read: But with the reign of King Bluebeard, you don’t have to pretend. Women, their bodies, their reproductive capacities, their animal nature, are central to the story. The history of the reign is so graphically gynaecological that in the past it enabled lady novelists to write about sex when they were only supposed to write about love; and readers could take an avid interest in what went on in royal bedrooms by dignifying it as history, therefore instructive, edifying. Popular fiction about the Tudors has also been a form of moral teaching about women’s lives, though what is taught varies with moral fashion. It used to be that Anne Boleyn was a man-stealer who got paid out. Often, now, the lesson is that if Katherine of Aragon had been a bit more foxy, she could have hung on to her husband. Anne as opportunist and sexual predator finds herself recruited to the cause of feminism. Always, the writers point to the fact that a man who marries his mistress creates a job vacancy. ‘Women beware women’ is a teaching that never falls out of fashion. Here is a Fresh Air interview with Mantel about her latest book, Bring Up the Bodies. Good read.

nprfreshair:

Over at the London Review of Books is a piece by Hilary Mantel about “Royal Bodies” — from Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette to Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana and Dutchess Kate. It is a great read:

But with the reign of King Bluebeard, you don’t have to pretend. Women, their bodies, their reproductive capacities, their animal nature, are central to the story. The history of the reign is so graphically gynaecological that in the past it enabled lady novelists to write about sex when they were only supposed to write about love; and readers could take an avid interest in what went on in royal bedrooms by dignifying it as history, therefore instructive, edifying. Popular fiction about the Tudors has also been a form of moral teaching about women’s lives, though what is taught varies with moral fashion. It used to be that Anne Boleyn was a man-stealer who got paid out. Often, now, the lesson is that if Katherine of Aragon had been a bit more foxy, she could have hung on to her husband. Anne as opportunist and sexual predator finds herself recruited to the cause of feminism. Always, the writers point to the fact that a man who marries his mistress creates a job vacancy. ‘Women beware women’ is a teaching that never falls out of fashion.

Here is a Fresh Air interview with Mantel about her latest book, Bring Up the Bodies.

Good read.

(Source: veryprinceharry)

Reblogged 3 months ago from nprfreshair (Originally from veryprinceharry) 271 notes
Knitting x2. Zeke wanted me to knit him a circle scarf, then I decided I should finish the orange hat for him, so I’ve been switching when I get tired of the other one. View Larger

Knitting x2. Zeke wanted me to knit him a circle scarf, then I decided I should finish the orange hat for him, so I’ve been switching when I get tired of the other one.

Posted 3 months ago 2 notes