<!--QuoteBegin-vishwas+Sep 30 2008, 11:34 PM-->QUOTE(vishwas @ Sep 30 2008, 11:34 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Husky, I believe that is a fake. Here is a website that thinks so: Media Desk
[right][snapback]88606[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Well, then Media Desk better communicate their suspicions to Time Magazine and Amazon UK (see below). Although Time Ragazine is famous for lying about Hinduism and other non-christoislamic traditions, it tends to be favourable toward WASPy christianism (even if not always toward catholicism). I had so far thought they might report accurately concerning their own religion.
Regardless of whether TIME's journalism turns out to be inept in *every* area, one would expect more of UK's Amazon branch at least. It may even get sued for advertising a book as being authored by one "Ruth Smythers beloved wife of the Reverend L.D. Smythers, Pastor of the Arcadian Methodist Church of the Eastern Regional Conference". If her character and writings were penned by others or someone working under a pseudonym and/or in a later time, Amazon should state this clearly. In fact, whoever wrote Amazon UK's product description for the book states that "the methodist's wife did not intend to be amusing" even if her work appears today as hysterical (or troubling). See below.
1. Time Magazine. Presents as historical various quotations on the TIME article's topic, including:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,993155,00.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Sex Talk Through the Ages</b>
Monday, Jan. 19, 2004
"At this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth. Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: give little, give seldom, and above all give grudgingly." -<b>-RUTH SMYTHERS, Instruction and Advice for the Young Bride (1894)</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
2. Amazon UK stocks a book on a related topic which it lists as being from 1894 and authored by Ruth Smythers
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-Tips-Husbands-...=266239&s=books
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Sex Tips for Husbands and Wives from 1894 (Hardcover)
by Ruth Smythers (Author)</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(Note that the year "2008" in Amazon's cataloguing data merely indicates the year of reprint or date this was published by the current publishers.)
My comment in purple.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/product...=266239&s=books
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Product Description</b>
<b>In 1894, Ruth Smythers, 'Beloved wife of The Reverend L. D. Smythers', wrote:'</b>While sex is at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be endured...One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: give little, give seldom and, above all, give grudgingly...Most men are by nature rather perverted, and if given half a chance, would engage in quite a variety of the most revolting practices.' <b>The Methodist wife didn't intend to be amusing, but this brief treatise written for young brides is side-splitting today and an eye-opener to how mores have changed in just over a century.</b>It includes essential advice on: how to discourage your spouse's amorous advances; appropriate night-wear for the wedded couple; and, the acceptable length and frequency of unavoidable sexual encounters.
(The bold statement seems to explain why Amazon UK placed the book in its humour section.)
<b>About the Author
Ruth Smythers was beloved wife of the Reverend L.D. Smythers, Pastor of the Arcadian Methodist Church of the Eastern Regional Conference.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->It's not impossible that MediaDesk may be right and Amazon and Time may have (been) misled. Still, having read MediaDesk's page, I did not find that it offered any tangible evidence other than their say-so. For instance, no complete listing of all pastors or reverends in the area of the time is provided to disprove the existence of reverend whoever smythers, so that we may verify for ourselves what they say they have verified for us. Nor does MediaDesk's wording encourage complete confidence:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Desk <b>believes</b> the work to be
- no more than about thirty to forty years old (putting it smack dab into the middle of the sexual revolution),
- <b>or</b> that the original piece <b>may indeed be of antique origin, but</b> it has been extensively re-written and modified to increase its "oh my" factor (such as the overuse of the word 'sex').
Also there are some historical facts that bring the article under serious <b>suspicion.</b> <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Other christian sites (such as the christian <i>blog</i> "bookstoysgames") that repeat the same arguments/suspicions as MediaDesk, also offer no further verifiable information for disproving it other than saying it's a hoax. Am still waiting for their evidence.
Anyway, be all that as it may, I'd read a number of books by people who actually lived at around the turn of the 19th-to-20th century UK and whose fictional-but-historically-accurate novels were set at that time too. And the angst about sex/fear of intimacy is rather a recurring pattern, regardless of whether the authors themselves suffered from such a complex or were merely making observations about the overriding situation and views of their time and place. Only the working class women in the UK seemed to have taken things in stride.
Also, in the intro to film course that I did, it was drilled into us how wives in Victorian England often experienced the first night of marriage as 'rape' (because of the way in which they were raised where they were conditioned to think most of life was 'base', unchristian). Not kidding you, 'rape' was the word they used in the course.
Other strange things: why women of that time would never utter the word "womb" I think it was (the word used in NL was "schoot" - I read these English books translated into Dutch, knew little English back then) when singing some hymns or psalms about maria mother of jeebus. Only the men would sing that word in church while the women would stay silent for just that bit. There was all kinds of weirdness - things that seem like comical satire now but which were part of the pathetic reality back then. Sexual repression and apprehension was the order of the day back then, however alien such mindsets may appear to the rest of the world, or however alien these things may seem to any christians today. Christians' lives back then *were* a comedy. Tragicomedy.
[right][snapback]88606[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Well, then Media Desk better communicate their suspicions to Time Magazine and Amazon UK (see below). Although Time Ragazine is famous for lying about Hinduism and other non-christoislamic traditions, it tends to be favourable toward WASPy christianism (even if not always toward catholicism). I had so far thought they might report accurately concerning their own religion.
Regardless of whether TIME's journalism turns out to be inept in *every* area, one would expect more of UK's Amazon branch at least. It may even get sued for advertising a book as being authored by one "Ruth Smythers beloved wife of the Reverend L.D. Smythers, Pastor of the Arcadian Methodist Church of the Eastern Regional Conference". If her character and writings were penned by others or someone working under a pseudonym and/or in a later time, Amazon should state this clearly. In fact, whoever wrote Amazon UK's product description for the book states that "the methodist's wife did not intend to be amusing" even if her work appears today as hysterical (or troubling). See below.
1. Time Magazine. Presents as historical various quotations on the TIME article's topic, including:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,993155,00.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Sex Talk Through the Ages</b>
Monday, Jan. 19, 2004
"At this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth. Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: give little, give seldom, and above all give grudgingly." -<b>-RUTH SMYTHERS, Instruction and Advice for the Young Bride (1894)</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
2. Amazon UK stocks a book on a related topic which it lists as being from 1894 and authored by Ruth Smythers
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-Tips-Husbands-...=266239&s=books
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Sex Tips for Husbands and Wives from 1894 (Hardcover)
by Ruth Smythers (Author)</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(Note that the year "2008" in Amazon's cataloguing data merely indicates the year of reprint or date this was published by the current publishers.)
My comment in purple.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/product...=266239&s=books
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Product Description</b>
<b>In 1894, Ruth Smythers, 'Beloved wife of The Reverend L. D. Smythers', wrote:'</b>While sex is at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be endured...One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: give little, give seldom and, above all, give grudgingly...Most men are by nature rather perverted, and if given half a chance, would engage in quite a variety of the most revolting practices.' <b>The Methodist wife didn't intend to be amusing, but this brief treatise written for young brides is side-splitting today and an eye-opener to how mores have changed in just over a century.</b>It includes essential advice on: how to discourage your spouse's amorous advances; appropriate night-wear for the wedded couple; and, the acceptable length and frequency of unavoidable sexual encounters.
(The bold statement seems to explain why Amazon UK placed the book in its humour section.)
<b>About the Author
Ruth Smythers was beloved wife of the Reverend L.D. Smythers, Pastor of the Arcadian Methodist Church of the Eastern Regional Conference.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->It's not impossible that MediaDesk may be right and Amazon and Time may have (been) misled. Still, having read MediaDesk's page, I did not find that it offered any tangible evidence other than their say-so. For instance, no complete listing of all pastors or reverends in the area of the time is provided to disprove the existence of reverend whoever smythers, so that we may verify for ourselves what they say they have verified for us. Nor does MediaDesk's wording encourage complete confidence:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Desk <b>believes</b> the work to be
- no more than about thirty to forty years old (putting it smack dab into the middle of the sexual revolution),
- <b>or</b> that the original piece <b>may indeed be of antique origin, but</b> it has been extensively re-written and modified to increase its "oh my" factor (such as the overuse of the word 'sex').
Also there are some historical facts that bring the article under serious <b>suspicion.</b> <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Other christian sites (such as the christian <i>blog</i> "bookstoysgames") that repeat the same arguments/suspicions as MediaDesk, also offer no further verifiable information for disproving it other than saying it's a hoax. Am still waiting for their evidence.
Anyway, be all that as it may, I'd read a number of books by people who actually lived at around the turn of the 19th-to-20th century UK and whose fictional-but-historically-accurate novels were set at that time too. And the angst about sex/fear of intimacy is rather a recurring pattern, regardless of whether the authors themselves suffered from such a complex or were merely making observations about the overriding situation and views of their time and place. Only the working class women in the UK seemed to have taken things in stride.
Also, in the intro to film course that I did, it was drilled into us how wives in Victorian England often experienced the first night of marriage as 'rape' (because of the way in which they were raised where they were conditioned to think most of life was 'base', unchristian). Not kidding you, 'rape' was the word they used in the course.
Other strange things: why women of that time would never utter the word "womb" I think it was (the word used in NL was "schoot" - I read these English books translated into Dutch, knew little English back then) when singing some hymns or psalms about maria mother of jeebus. Only the men would sing that word in church while the women would stay silent for just that bit. There was all kinds of weirdness - things that seem like comical satire now but which were part of the pathetic reality back then. Sexual repression and apprehension was the order of the day back then, however alien such mindsets may appear to the rest of the world, or however alien these things may seem to any christians today. Christians' lives back then *were* a comedy. Tragicomedy.