Today Google is honouring Charles Perrault.
Since i had to be reminded, here’s a friendly reminder that I HATE CHARLES PERRAULT AND EVERYTHING HE STANDS FOR.
Which is, basically, being a guy and sauntering in at the tail end of more than a century of aristocratic women developing a rich aesthetic and literary culture that uses fairy tales to talk in a coded fashion about politics and gender…
Rewriting a lot of those tales to be sexist as fucking fuck… (Seriously, the moral he appends to Bluebeard is “Curiosity has ruined many a marriage”)
Attributing the tales to an old peasant woman telling stories to children and failing to acknowledge the incredibly educated and refined women* he stole those tales from…
AND THEN BEING PRESENTED AS THE FIGUREHEAD OF THE ENTIRE MOVEMENT.
*Not because the tales would be less awesome if they were authentic peasant stories, which some collected stories are–but Mother Goose effectively obliterates the actual authors Perrault was working from, the precieuses, as role models for female writers.
Tag: what a bag of dicks
So Thomas Jefferson really liked Giuseppe Ceracchi’s (life-sized) sculpture of Hamilton, and got a copy of it for his entrance hall at Monticello. Then he set up a bust of himself across from it, so that anyone walking through the main entrance had to walk between the two. Which, you know, is petty and weird enough as it is. But apparently Jefferson’s bust was “colossal” and set up on this super ornate green marble pedestal so that it was waaaay bigger and more impressive than Hamilton’s. Literal children.
(source)
Way more childish than you even imagine:
“Jefferson went to his grave struggling to cast his relationship with
Hamilton in the right light, trying to depict himself as a liberal,
right-minded leader rather than the petty and vindictive politician he
often appeared to be. It was concern for his reputation that inspired
him to put Hamilton’s bust in the main entrance way to Monticello; there
could be no nobler act than to acknowledge the greatness of one’s
enemies – and only the greatest of men could defeat such a foe.
Positioned in Jefferson’s American museum alongside Indian artifacts and
moose antlers, Hamilton’s bust is a political hunting trophy, evidence
of the path not taken and the superiority of those who chose the right
course.”– Joanne Freeman, Affairs of Honor
Kimchi and Justice 