For the fashion-forward lady of 1924

Ladies: in case you're feeling fashion-forward - n.b. fine cotton woven bloomers in navy or white, a snip at 1/11 1/2, down from 2/6 (Hugh Wright's of Queen St advertisement, NZ Herald, 13 October 1924, via Papers Past)

Deconstructing the Civic Administration Building (still)

 

Jane Austen's letters to Cassandra

It is frequently said of Austen’s letters that they ‘illuminate’ the world of her fiction. This is certainly the case, though to say so is hardly to say very much. Sometimes, it is true, Austen comments directly on work in progress – in particular, on the earlier novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. (In a famous letter written just after the publication of Pride and Prejudice in 1813, she tells Cassandra that she is ‘vain enough’ over her book, but thinks it ‘rather too light & bright & sparkling; – it wants shade.’) But what advocates of Austen’s correspondence usually mean is that the letters deal in a general way with the same topics explored in the fiction: marriages and family life, parties and balls, domestic entertainments and the now-antiquated courtship rituals of the early 19th-century provincial English gentry.

Yet with Cassandra in mind, one wants to put a finer point on it. Both Austen and Cassandra received marriage proposals at different points in their lives; Cassandra was in fact engaged to be married in 1797, only to have her fiancé die of a fever in the West Indies. Austen received at least two proposals in her youth, both of which she turned down. Biographers have made much of a mysterious ‘gentleman’ at Lyme Regis in 1804-5 who, according to Austen’s niece Caroline (who heard about it from Cassandra), had ‘seemed greatly attracted by my Aunt Jane ... I can only say that the impression left on Aunt Cassandra was that he had fallen in love with her sister, and was quite in earnest. Soon afterwards they heard of his death.’ Whatever one makes of the story (and Austen’s own part in it goes unrecorded) neither she nor Cassandra showed much real inclination for matrimony later in life. One can’t help but feel that both found greater comfort and pleasure – more of that ‘heartfelt felicity’ that Emma Woodhouse finds with Mr Knightley, or Elizabeth Bennet with the handsome Darcy – in remaining with one another.

The letters from Austen that Cassandra allowed to survive testify to such a primordial bond. Virginia Woolf observed of Austen’s fiction that ‘it is where the power of the man has to be conveyed that her novels are always at their weakest.’ Perhaps this is because men are inevitably inferior to sisters...

- Terry Castle, 'Sister-Sister', London Review of Books, 3 August 1995

Wellington Hospital, Mein St

 

If you wanna act the fool, walk away and leave me

Thursday music corner: American blues and soul singer Syl Johnson (b. Mississippi, 1936, d. Georgia 2022) is perhaps best known for a song covered by other artists: Is It Because I'm Black (Ken Boothe and Delroy Wilson). He also released a version of Take Me to the River before labelmate Al Green's own single release, recorded with the same band. Johnson released at least 19 studio albums from 1968 to 2010, on a range of labels.

Johnson released his third album Back For a Taste of Your Love in 1973 on Hi Records, featuring Anyway the Wind Blows as track four.

Syl Johnson - Anyway The Wind Blows (1973)

See also:

Music: Syl Johnson - Is It Because I'm Black (1969)

Music: Syl Johnson - Annie Got Hot Pants Power (1971)

Music: Syl Johnson - Take Me to the River (1975)

Aristotle & the politics of flourishing

The politics of flourishing

The good life for Aristotle has an inescapably social and political dimension. The Stoics don't need other people to follow the good life; they can do it on their own, in exile, in a prison cell, anywhere. But for Aristotle, many of the virtues are social, such as good humour, friendliness and patience. That means we can only achieve the good life together. We're naturally social and political creatures, which is why we feel fulfilled when we're working on a common project, uniting with others in friendship. Friendship is a key virtue for Aristotle - he devoted a whole book of the Nichomachean Ethics to it. The Epicureans also emphasised the importance of friendship, but theirs is a friendship disconnected from political life. It's a private friendship. For Aristotle, friendship in its highest form has a political or civic dimension. We love our friends not just because we like each other or are useful to each other, but because we share the same values and ideals for our society, and come together to advance those ideals.

The good society, then, is one which enables its members to reach human fulfilment. Humans are happy when the highest drives of their natures are fulfilled - the drive to know, to master skills and virtues, to connect with other people and work on common projects. Aristotle's vision of human nature was tested out, in the 1970s, by two psychologists called Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. They found that humans are not the profit motivated creatures that liberal economics believed. In fact, a series of experiments run by Deci and Ryan suggested humans will actually work harder at projects for less money, or even no money, if they find these projects to be meaningful, challenging socially engaging, and fun. That's why humans are prepared to spend so much time and effort on projects like blogs or Wikipedia, which don't necessarily make a profit. We're not killing time, we're making meaning. As Aristotle predicted, we're seeking ways to fulfil the higher drives of our nature for meaning, mastery, engagement, transcendence and fun. A good society creates opportunities for its citizens to fulfil these drives. Aristotle thought the best constitution for the pursuit of the good life is democracy, because democratic societies enable people to join together and set up clubs, associations, networks, communities of friends, which can practise philosophy and reason their way to the common good. And the solutions they come up with will be better than in a tyranny where only a handful of minds are engaged. In a democratic society, everyone is thinking, everyone is engaged.

- Jules Evans, Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, 2013, p.214-5.