Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman were maybe born in the wrong century, literally! Every day for the past six years, the husband-and-wife team has attempted to live a Victorian-era lifestyle in England.
Chrisman’s devotion to Victorian life is intense and sporadic (she rejects historical analysis, referring to secondary sources as a “game of telephone”). To begin, her piece was disseminated on a website, looked to be a modification of a very similar essay she wrote on another website in 2013, and concluded with a suggestion that the reader visit her personal website, which does not address the question of finances.
Chrisman writes,” Dealing with all these things and not being ground down by them, not letting other people’s hostile ignorance rob us of the joy we find in this life — that is the hard part. By comparison, wearing a Victorian corset is the easiest thing in the world.
This is why more people don’t follow their dreams: They know the world is a cruel place for anyone who doesn’t fit into the dominant culture. Most people fear bullies so much that they knuckle under simply to be left alone. In the process, they crush their own dreams.”
Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman are living memorials to a bygone time, dressing in Victorian-era garb and stocking their vittles’ in an icebox at their home in Port Townsend, Wash.
Sarah Chrisman has said that The Victorian Era had always been her favorite time in history. It all starts with her trying out a corset and feeling extremely comfortable in it.
She realized that everything she had heard about corsets was wrong, She started asking myself what else had she heard about the era, what else might be wrong.
The Chrismans experienced hostility from the internet when Sarah Chrisman penned an essay on their lives for Vox. People on social media pointed out that women did not have the right to vote during the Victorian era, but Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman stated voting isn’t a big deal to them. They have said that in many respects, women actually had a lot more power than they have now, and the issue is that the power that women had back then that they’ve lost now.
Is this reminisce or denial? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Do you, too, love the past so much you like having pieces of it? Done with Victorian, let’s learn how to make the Gothic garden of our dreams.
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