Elizabeth I of England, the Armada Portrait, Woburn Abbey (George Gower, ca 1588). Other versions of the Armada portrait are by different artists. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are many benefits to living at the present time but if you had the chance to live in another era which would you choose? I have often thought about this and haven’t really decided which I would choose. It is easier to choose from a time gone by rather than one in the future for we cannot know what the future holds as far as living in it is concerned. The past however has already shown us to some extent what conditions were like. With that in mind my thoughts are inclined to choose Elizabethan or Jacobean and also the 1940′s. The first two choices are probably based on romantic ideas about the times but of course they weren’t ideal times for everyone. The third choice is probably more to my heart. It was a time just before the modern renaissance where technology began to take giant strides. It was a time of war however and not so good from that point of view. One of the things which attract me to these times are women’s fashion styles. I simply liked what they wore, especially the 1940′s. I saw a story on television about a couple in their late 50′s perhaps who live their lives as Victorians wearing the clothes of the time. The husband’s duty was to wind-up his wife’s corset for the day which she wore presumably all day long. In fact Victorian women wore theirs all week and were only released to enable them to pass solids, then laced up again! By the 1940′s women still wore corsets but I suppose not all of the time. Steam trains, propeller aeroplanes, hardly any labour saving devices for the masses and a more leisurely lifestyle was a pipe-dream for most. There were many things wrong about the 40′s but things were about to change for the better, maybe! When I was born in 1945 and I remember living in a prefabricated house which had some of the things many folk couldn’t afford to buy for themselves but they were only there because the council supplied them. No-one had a private telephone unless they were well-off financially or were in business. We had a television in 1953, long before we got a telephone. In the 40′s, especially the early 40′s none of these were within reach of the ordinary working man or woman, I think that is probably why I would have liked to live then, as an adult of course, as life was lived at a much slower pace.
Shirley Anne
