Metro Pulse/Secret History/1900 House

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In which we are not amused by pseudohistorical sadists

by Jack Neely

The 1900 House series, concluded last week, was fun to watch. For three months the Bowlers, a modern English family, lived in an urban house in London ostensibly fitted precisely to the standards of a middle-class family of the year 1900. Documentarians filmed them daily as they went about their high-Victorian business.

After the final episode, it was beginning to seem an even sillier idea than Survivor. Though Mrs. Bowler struck many viewers as neurotic, I had a sneaky suspicion that the fop with the pointy sideburns, the "creator" of the concept, was a sadist. He dropped by occasionally to remind the clueless 1999 family of their anachronistic transgressions.

Most in 1900 lived by strict Victorian rules in large part because they found security in being conventional. The people of 1900 wore corsets for the same reason the Bowlers, the moment they got out, made a beeline to Burger King. If you're trying to follow conventions in a city where no one else is doing so, being conventional offers little comfort—a pointless lesson that the Bowlers learned painfully.

The people of 1900 were the ones who came up with the manners they oppressed themselves with. To the English of 1900, manners were a symbol of British imperial superiority. Half the fun of being proper and English was being proper and English at a time when Britannia ruled the waves and was kicking butt all over the world.

The real people of 1900 were easier with their own ways than the 1999 Bowlers were. They didn't have to learn how to run a sewing machine, bake a cake on a woodstove, and lace up a corset all at once.

And why were the Bowlers ever bored? They could have spent the entire three months reading Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain, or G.B. Shaw, writers who are as caustically funny today as they were then. They could have read Darwin, Nietzche, Marx, writers still controversial a century later. They could have read Rimbaud, Verlaine, inspirations for some of the most daring poetry of the latter 20th century. They could have read the Bronte sisters, Poe, Henry James, Balzac, Whitman, Hugo, Kipling, Chekhov, Hardy, Dickens, Crane, Verne, Doyle, Stevenson, Bierce, H.G. Wells (The Time Machine, maybe). They could have read Veblen's sharp criticisms of the life they'd been living in both 1900 and 1999.

But all they just kept reading was that perverse household guide, which was dopey even by 1900 standards. If they were bored by it, they deserved to be.

One revelation of the show is that in several ways, Knoxville was far ahead of London in 1900. Two of the things the Bowlers missed most were telephones and electric lights. But by 1900, the Knoxville Electric Light and Power Co. was 12 years old, and we'd had phone service for 20 years. True, only 1,400 Knoxvillians had phones in 1900—they were slow to catch on—but if you had a middle-class job and really wanted a phone, you could swing it.

Though it was named for a woman, Victorian society was unfairly weighted in men's favor, no question. But what really bothered me about 1900 House was the assertion, repeated like cudgel blows, that women had no options in 1900, no identity outside of their husbands, no hope of making anything of themselves. Women who found security in being conventional in 1900 did so. Many didn't, and weren't.

In 1900, English-born author and former Knoxvillian Frances Hodgson Burnett had dozens of bestsellers under her corset, and was, at 51, a very wealthy woman. Having dumped her first husband, Dr. Burnett, she was about to marry a much-younger man.

In 1900, Virginia Woolf was 18, Gertrude Stein was 26, Collette was 27. All of them found ways to break molds. Emma Goldman was a 31-year-old anarchist known for her espousal of free love. In 1900, Carry Nation was walking into men's saloons with an axe and smashing them to bits. That was an option.

Women couldn't vote in either England or America, and that's a weird thing to remember. However, the most vital stories of the year 1900 were the growing reform movements, to improve the lot of the poor, the sick, children. Women like Jane Addams dominated them.

Here in town, quite a few women were making their own way in 1900. Lizzie Crozier French was a single mother in her 40s, who'd been a teacher and reformer and feminist lecturer for years.

In 1900, Patty Boyd, at 33, was the eccentric and popular society columnist and sometime reporter for the Knoxville Journal. Adelia Lutz was already an accomplished artist with a statewide reputation. A younger colleague would overshadow her; at 21, Catherine Wiley was an illustrator attending UT, which had been co-ed for several years; inspired by the artistic currents of her time, she would later be hailed as Tennessee's greatest impressionist.

In 1900, Bertha Roth was an 18-year-old violinist; she would later found the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. At 25, Annie Davis was a Bryn Mawr alum who would later be the first woman elected to represent Knox County in the state general assembly, and credited with the idea for founding a Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At 49, Lou Krutch was one of Knoxville's most successful music teachers, even though she dressed unconventionally and, unlike proper Victorian ladies, was known to take off on camping trips in the Smokies. Anne Armstrong, at 28, was an aspiring businesswoman and would soon become the first woman to lecture at the Harvard School of Business. Later, she was a successful business executive and, somehow, novelist.

I don't know, having never lived in 1900, but 1900 House made that era seem harder, more oppressive, and duller than history renders it. But it could have been worse. If you really want to see modern people squirm, lock them in a 1975 House.