Just saw the cute lil romance "Kate and Leopold," starring Meg Ryan. Darling little comedy - just her style. It's about a time warp thing. Old fashioned British boy, 18th century, comes through a time warp with her old b'friend into modern day NY. Of course they (Meg and the 18th c. dude... not the two guys!) fall in love and eventually get together. But what was remarkable, of course, was the 18th c. guy doing his thing in our current world. Whadda difference! Manners, customs, a way of speech, eating and experiencing the finer things of life we may not take the time for now. But was it better? Or was there just as much oppression, especially for the female gender, death, disease, hardship (except for the very rich). Have we just romanticized the days gone by? or was there a time when wine tasted better? when song stirred the soul? when honor was worth defending? Did that time seem more real? Were people more "present"? And how can we know? Have we lost something in the midst of our high, fast paced technology? Just wonderin'...  xox Faye Desiree

I haven't seen the movie, although I want to see it now that you described it!  I think most of the people back then were peasants and they did not understand fine wine and music because they could not afford it.  Besides they were too busy farming to have time for it.  Like today's modern society, there are always certain people who eminate class, romance, status, pride, intellect, manners, and warmth.  They are rare people, but they exist.  I think the movie stereotypes the past we want rather than the one that existed.  That is my guess.

Reid we used to be better?

According to the movie's official web page, Leopold's home date is 1867, which is 19th century, not 18th.  But it scarcely matters.  Hollywood's historical imagination is merely visual.  Costumes, furniture, vehicles, and buildings are usually perfect, but the manners in which characters think and talk are invariably a careless mixture of total fantasy and the present day.   If you want to travel back in time to 19th-century England and see for yourself what people and life were really like, then your best bet is to read some of the many three-volume novels written in and about that country and era, by Dickens, Hardy, Trollope, Disraeli, Galsworthy, and so forth.  Or, for women's perspectives, try "George Eliot" (pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans) and  the Bronte sisters.

If you were to get in an actual time machine and check it out, I figure you'd find many things better and many things worse than what we have today.  W. S. Gilbert's 1885 crack about "The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, all centuries but this and every country but his own" still holds good; but it is equal idiocy to assume that the life of one's own century and country is better in every possible respect, even though it may indeed be better on balance.  And of course in any era the quality and style of life varies with social class.  (As Duke of Albany, Leopold is scarcely your average Victorian Englishman!)  

If you are really nostalgic for the English Victorian era, an era of global empire and of massive inequalities--both between the sexes and among hereditary social classes--then I suggest you thank the Supremes for selecting George II as your president.

But if you could change things around today to be the way you'd like it to me, what would you change?  For me, I'd have us take life a bit more slowly, be more aware, more considerate and kind, taking the time to say hello or even chat with a neighbor. Feeling safe enough to share - a moment, a flower, a thought, a smile... or even love and affection. Not so afraid to make a commitment, or at least try a relationship, becuz we're so afraid of the consequences. This sounds simplistic and silly. But I think it makes all the difference in running on Type A behavior and being able to enjoy our lives while they fly before us. (What was it John Lennon said: "life is what happens when we're busy making other plans," or something to that effect.) xox Faye Desiree

Certainly some things were better (not just different) in the past.  But you have to view the total picture, as Antiphon was doing so well, until he got sidetracked at the end.

Sure men were more honorable in the 19th century, but they also killed each other in duels and countries went to war over things we would consider laughable today.  

Was society more civil?  Well there was a veneer of civility, but  it masked rampant intolerance based social class, religion, occupation, gender and family lineage.  

Yes people read more, perhaps used their minds more, took music and literature more seriously, along with other things in daily life we take for granted simply because we have such an abudance by comparison.  The average life in the 19th century was defined by scarcity, rather than bounty.  A pocket watch, for example, was handed down to each generation as a cherished family heirloom, because it was the only one you'd have a chance of owning (assuming you were lucky enough to be the eldest, and not the youngest son).

We know people weren't more moral, however, because swindles, robbery and other crimes were more prevalent in Dicken's time than our own.  And during that same period of the early Industrial Revolution, children were treated abysmally, women only slightly better, and men frequently worked 6 days a week, 12 hours per day until they dropped dead in their 40's, leaving a family without support (you've heard the term Debtor's Prison).  

The glamour and chivalry of the courting ritual (which I'm guessing was the main theme of the movie) quickly disappeared after marriage and the woman assumed the restricted, and often dreary existence of a wife.  Unless, of course, she was lucky enough to be born into nobility so  life's difficulties could be borne by someone from a lesser class.  And of course, your lot in life was cast before you even started school thanks to the rigidty of a society that maintained the status quo by enforcing a caste system at all costs.  The term  "upward mobility" wasn't invented until after WWII, and we all know civil rights took much longer still.

Yes the dresses flowed and the fashions were elegant.  But you can't smell B.O. in a movie, nor can you tell that most people only took one bath a year- usually in May, which is why most weddings were in June (the smell was still tolerable, and the tradition of the bouquet, which started centuries earlier, was to mask what smell had returned).  Baths were more frequent by the second half of the century, at least during summer.  Skin diseases were common.

Food without perservatives did taste better, and if you lived on a farm, you savored every mouthful for about three months a year.  The other nine, of course, you had to fill your diet with horribly preserved staples, or cover the taste of  semi-rotting food with large amounts of pepper or other spices.  Don't get sick, though, because the outhouse was covered in snow five months a year and was a long walk behind the house (but you could always use the bed pan).  And if you really got sick, you stood a good chance of dying from diseases we don't even think about today.

But most of all, the Humanistic world you seek most definitely didn't exist in the 19th Century.  Human rights were almost non-existent in most countries, and intolerance was the norm.  Politics were oppresive and exclusionary, and business was exploitive and monopolisitic on a massive scale.  In fact, the overall life of the average person was so dreary, it spawned the many reform movements of the 20th century.  They readily found support.

The world you describe existed mainly in the minds of poets, artists, and musicians who found escape from the harsh reality around them by creating beautiful word poems, paintings, and symphonies.  Thankfully we still enjoy their labors today, and they have become our "classics" because of the artistic purity their work captures.  Unfortunately, they never enjoyed the life their words portrayed or their music inspired, that privilege is ours to enjoy.  

-- Modified on 1/6/2002 6:29:46 PM

I was thinking many of the same things but you had already written them.

I have always been of the opinion that there has never been a better time to be alive than today.

Now, there can always be exceptions. If you are being tortured by the Taliban for owning a bible, if you are starving in a North Korean prison camp, etc.

But in general, things are so much better for the average person today that we don't even have a realistic view of what like was like 75 years ago, let alone 250 years ago. Most of the idyllic scenes portrayed of the English countryside and the noble peasants of that time (200 years ago) for the most part didnt even exist then. Much of that style of writing was a reaction against the industrial revolution and a longing to return to an agrarian utopia, which never truly existed. For one thing, it was the wealth being created by the industrial revolution that allowed people to devote more time to things like poetry and created a class of people who wanted to 'buy' things like that.

You see many of the same forces at work today when a 22 year old nike wearing, nokia owning, latte drinking anti-capitalist/globalization protester tosses a garbage can through the window of a MacDonalds. It was the wealth created by the system they want to tear down, that allowed them the free time to spend worrying about things like globalization instead of worrying where their next meal was coming from. Instead they can just order a pie from Pizza hut on their cellphone and charge it to moms visa.

I mean, when was the last time we had a famine because crops failed. (Probably during that agrarian utopia)

Reid we used to be better?

I liked the comment that one of my client's made on this subject.  This European lady was a single mom with one child.  Financially she was very poor contrasted to most readers of this post.  Her comment was "Why should I complain?  My life is better than a king from the 1700's."

I give this century a 9 for appearance and a 7 for performance
I give last century a 4 for appearance and a 8 for performance
but YMMV...