Red Stitches - Tumblr Posts
A Victorian Quilt and the Power of Words
TW: Very brief mentions of SA and attempted un-aliving
This is kind of random, but it's 2am and I have no one to talk to about it, so here we are 😆 I really enjoy watching J. Draper's YouTube videos. She presents all these fascinating little historical tidbits about London and while I'm not traveled nor from the UK, I like interesting tidbits.
Tonight, I stumbled on one of her longer videos. I'm only halfway through it, but it's a deep dive into what it was like to be a Victorian in-home servant. They worked 6am to 10pm every day and had no days off and very little time for themselves. On their days off they had to be quiet so as to not disturb the family. And they were highly discouraged from reading anything but the Bible, because a maid who wanted to better herself or rise above her station was not considered desirable. So for many, all their downtime was spent sewing. Quilts and samplers. And in the Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington, there's an interesting little bit of history. A sampler, 30x34 inches (84x74 cm). The height of two bowling pins, or six cans of Coke-a-Cola. And it's a bit plain as there is nothing on it but words. At first, I thought it was full of Bible verses. It's not.
It was a diary or autobiography if you wish to call it that, written by a house maid named Elizabeth Parker in 1830. Believing herself to be illiterate simply because she didn't know how to write with a pen, she told the story of her life, not in ink, but in tiny, precise red stitches. It tells of her family, her jobs, and her pain. Of how she was SA-ed by an employer and then thrown down the stairs for objecting to it. Of how she was so ashamed what happened that she never told anyone, not even her closest friends. That she attempted to end her life, because she didn't know how to cope with it. And her worries about the fate of her soul.
The sampler ends mid-sentence, though her life went on for many years, as a historian has since discovered. Elizabeth eventually became a school teacher and raised her sister's daughter after she died.
The story really threw me. I had to sit with it for a few minutes. We take so much for granted now. Not just things like laundry detergent and spreadable butter, which do make our lives much, much easier. But we really take for granted the way we can so easily communicate and experience communication. It gave me a chill, a shiver of appreciation for all that we have. Not just quick laundry and butter that easily glides over toast. But the way in which we can express ourselves, explore who we and others are. Talk to friends night and day. We can read books, and scribble quick notes on paper or phones, and tell stories to each other. Real ones. Fictional ones. Pixel ones.
Words have power. Our stories have power. The ability to share experiences and lessen the burden of pain with others, has an immense power. And it wasn't always something we had. It's something many people still don't have.
Whenever I complain about how hard it is to write, I am going to try to remember Elizabeth Parker. A woman who was so driven to tell her story, to leave a mark of her existence, that she spent the precious few available hours of her day pricking her fingers and sewing the details of her life into cloth, because it was her only means of satisfying the very human and real need to be seen and heard. And our ability to so easily do that now, isn't something I want to take for granted.
