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The Victorian Chaise-Longue

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For a much shorter, less mysterious take on a similar situation, see the 1890 classic, The Yellow Wall-Paper. My review, HERE, includes a link to a free version on Project Gutenberg. For the rest of what I think about this book, I'll link to my reading journal. Sometimes for what I want to say, this little box here where I'm supposed to post my thoughts just isn't the right venue. Don't worry - there's not much in the way of spoilers there. 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. I actually don't say this too often, but I think this his book would've benefited from a more rigorous editing process. The second half was actually quite good, and there were ideas and moments in here with great potential, but in general I found the book largely disappointing and even cringeworthy at points.

Increasingly, Melanie questions her sanity, as her thoughts and words seem to become less and less her own, with "no control over the words that came... they were alien words and phrases, yet no more deliberately chosen than any words one ordinarily chooses." When I was a boy we had lawn furniture and there was a lawn chair that was sort of like a lazy-boy….where you could rest your legs and feet on an extension of the chair. My parents called it a chaise lounge. I guess they were right. But maybe technically it was a chaise longue. 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.It opens with a bald fear of death: firstly from a quotation of TS Eliot, "I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me", and then the opening sentence of the book itself, "Will you give me your word of honour... that I'm not going to die?" (Eliot may have been echoing Cranmer’s “In the midst of life we are in death”, translated from the Latin, “ Media vita in morte sumus” for the burial service in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.) The presence of an antique chaise adds a touch of luxury and refinement to a space. It offers a comfortable spot for relaxation, reading, or contemplation. An antique chaise serves as a versatile and stylish piece of furniture that elevates the aesthetic and creates a sense of timeless elegance in a living room, bedroom, or any other area of the home. It could have been any conceivable period of time in which the thought that all these were strange took shape and words." For the purpose of this article, however, we will focus on the modern iterations of this piece of furniture.The chaise longue (pronounced “shayz long”, the literal English translation from French for which is “long chair”) has in recent decades become more popularly known and pronounced as chaise lounge in English-speaking countries. The modern chaise longue was first popularised during the 16th century in France. They were created by French furniture craftsmen for the rich to rest without the need to retire to the bedroom. It was during the Rococo period that the chaise longue became the symbol of social status and only the rarest and most expensive materials were used in their construction. Today, the chaise longue is seen as a luxury item for the modern home. They are often used to complement a home’s décor such as living or reading rooms, or as a stylish boudoir chair for bedroom seating.During the 1800s, the chaise longue developed more feminine connotations as a decadentthrone for women to rest during the day without having to go to their bedroom. It was during the French Rococo period that the chaise longue became a symbol of social status and were ornately crafted from only the rarest and most expensive of materials. Types of Chaise Lounges At first the contrast between the two halves, one set in the then-present, one in Victorian times, seems stark: highlighted by the difference in tone, the opening section has a slightly pulpy, fluffy feel, while the section that follows is far more serious and sombre. Melanie lives in a meticulously-restored house in a newly-gentrified part of London, made possible by her husband’s successful career. She’s carefully tended to and, Laski makes it clear, considered deserving of attention because she’s young and pretty. Milly however, who’s resting on the same chaise-longue is confined to a stuffy sitting-room in a dreary, cluttered house, overseen by her stern sister who’s clearly obsessed with the ways in which Milly has somehow transgressed. However, as Laski’s narrative unfolds it’s evident Melanie and Milly are both in cages, it’s just that Melanie’s is more luxurious.

The setting was very sparse. Most of the story takes place around the chaise-longue in two different time periods: the 1950’s and the Victorian Era in England. Like I said, the setting felt very claustrophobic and like a stage in a play. It was done well in all it’s simplicity though. While I loved the book for its content and delivery, there were a few quibbles I had with the writing, which seemed to jump about a bit (But then, this may have been a way to show the MC's state of mind.) and with one element that left me puzzled - had the treatment of TB in the late 1940s/early 1950s really not moved on from the 1920s? La letteratura gotica mi è sempre piaciuta ma purtroppo non avevo mai sentito parlare di Marghanita Laski; dopo aver letto questo racconto sono convinta di voler addentrarmi di più nelle parole e libri dell'autrice, perchè Sulla chaise-longue mi ha molto intrigata.Timeless Appeal: Antique chaises have a timeless appeal that transcends changing design trends. They embody elegance and sophistication, making them suitable for both traditional and contemporary interior styles. 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. there was only her body’s need to lie on the Victorian chaise-longue, that, and an overwhelming assurance, or was it a memory, of another body that painfully crushed hers into the berlin-wool.” And both books look at people in their time, and really caught up in time and other circumstances. In Laski's novel, this leads to illustrate the state of women in society - Victorian society and that of the 1940s/50s. Is there much change?

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