![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksIt's SBD Monday again.
I'm taking a leaf from the books of the Ja(y)nes and Maili here. What have I learned while reading romance novels? Oh, a variety of things. Let's just stick to what I've learned about American history based on reading romance.
1. All Indians/Native Americans/Indigenous people were good; they never tortured or maimed or raped or killed innocent people. No evil existed on the continent until it was brought by the white man, along with measles and chicken pox.
2. Everyone in Boston, MA and the rest of the colonies had the utmost confidence in the rebellion. No one wanted to remain a subject of that stranger on the throne three thousand miles away.
3. No one in the South ever really believed in slavery. They fought for the CSA because they believed wholeheartedly in states' rights only.
4. Southern women always fell in love with the Union officers who occupied their plantations.
5. Soldiers (Union and Confederate) never raped or stole . . . except the villain of the book, who always got his comeuppance.
6. There's only one generic Southern drawl. Everyone from Virginia to Texas sounds the same.
7. The wagon train westward was a safe place for women alone -- hell, women could manage it alone, after all they were in a group and didn't need to carry their own weight or worry about hunting for food or defending themselves or actually driving their animals in the train.
8. And the railroads? Easily built with no fraud involved at all. In fact, built out of the goodness of the hearts of the railroad investors because of Manifest Destiny. [:eye roll here: the whole concept of Manifest Destiny set off my bullshit meter in elementary school, before I was even jaded or cynical. It's a good thing that romance novels have revised my way of thinking ;)]
9. The gold rush? Not dirty or ugly. Resulted only in the growth of wealth, never in poverty or the growth of slums or company controlled mining towns.
10. And personal hygiene? Really important to men and women in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, who bathed daily despite the difficulty of finding, hauling and heating fresh water when on the road and even when at home, despite the fact that indoor plumbing and hot/cold running water was a thing of the future only. They never smelled bad, sweated, menstruated, had unsightly hair in private places, or just felt "unfresh."
I'm taking a leaf from the books of the Ja(y)nes and Maili here. What have I learned while reading romance novels? Oh, a variety of things. Let's just stick to what I've learned about American history based on reading romance.
1. All Indians/Native Americans/Indigenous people were good; they never tortured or maimed or raped or killed innocent people. No evil existed on the continent until it was brought by the white man, along with measles and chicken pox.
2. Everyone in Boston, MA and the rest of the colonies had the utmost confidence in the rebellion. No one wanted to remain a subject of that stranger on the throne three thousand miles away.
3. No one in the South ever really believed in slavery. They fought for the CSA because they believed wholeheartedly in states' rights only.
4. Southern women always fell in love with the Union officers who occupied their plantations.
5. Soldiers (Union and Confederate) never raped or stole . . . except the villain of the book, who always got his comeuppance.
6. There's only one generic Southern drawl. Everyone from Virginia to Texas sounds the same.
7. The wagon train westward was a safe place for women alone -- hell, women could manage it alone, after all they were in a group and didn't need to carry their own weight or worry about hunting for food or defending themselves or actually driving their animals in the train.
8. And the railroads? Easily built with no fraud involved at all. In fact, built out of the goodness of the hearts of the railroad investors because of Manifest Destiny. [:eye roll here: the whole concept of Manifest Destiny set off my bullshit meter in elementary school, before I was even jaded or cynical. It's a good thing that romance novels have revised my way of thinking ;)]
9. The gold rush? Not dirty or ugly. Resulted only in the growth of wealth, never in poverty or the growth of slums or company controlled mining towns.
10. And personal hygiene? Really important to men and women in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, who bathed daily despite the difficulty of finding, hauling and heating fresh water when on the road and even when at home, despite the fact that indoor plumbing and hot/cold running water was a thing of the future only. They never smelled bad, sweated, menstruated, had unsightly hair in private places, or just felt "unfresh."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 10:48 am (UTC)don't forget the football stadiums of earls and dukes all of whom HATED Almacks but ended up going anyway.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 12:31 pm (UTC)Jane
no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 04:50 pm (UTC)So wait, they don't all sound the same? :)
~Jay
no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 04:57 pm (UTC)I had a linguistics prof who specialized in regional dialects. He could tell within 50-100 miles where most Americans were from, even people who didn't sound like they had "accents." Which was amazing to me, since half the time I couldn't hear a distinction, especially for people from the midwest....unless they were from the upper midwest, like the Dakotas or Minnesota.