Vivre libre ou mourir

there’s a 1869 strauss waltz called “wine, women and song” -> sex drugs and rock and roll has always existed as a concept

🎃 Ever wonder how Frankenstein and The Vampyre came to life? It all began during the stormy summer of 1816, a time so eerie it’s now called the "Year Without a Summer." Confined indoors by relentless rain, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori challenged each other to write the scariest story they could. What followed was nothing short of legendary: Shelley’s Frankenstein—a tale of ambition, creation, and consequence—and Polidori’s The Vampyre, the first modern vampire story that still haunts us today.

These works explore themes we still grapple with—ambition, relationships, power, and the unknown. And they remind us of what the humanities do best: helping us ask the big questions about who we are and how we live together.

This Halloween, revisit these iconic stories and reflect on how literature challenges us to confront our fears—both real and imagined. Check out our latest blog post to explore the spirit of Villa Diodati and the enduring importance of these tales.

Read it now on the JSTOR blog.

getting secondhand embarrassment reading nietzsche's thoughts on women

it's really funny the way he does it too like he stresses that what he is about to say is not objective truth he's like "this is just my personal conviction :) an opinion that really is more instructive about my nature than the nature of reality. my own personal truth that i believe in my heart no matter what any learning could teach me. okay here goes ^.^ women are not capable of higher order thought they are predestined for servitude and anyone who thinks otherwise is a deluded woman who has lost all her feminine charm or weak soyboy who was dropped on his head as a baby and therefore can only think half as well as a regular man"

like. who hurt you

famously the writer and psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé had multiple intellectuals of the time (incl rainer maria rilke) falling head over heels in love with her and then turning into incels after she rejected them. nietzsche was one such. the original it girl...

i looked her up, what a fascinating person! also the way nietzsche proposed to her twice got rejected both times and STILL wanted to go through with her plan to establish an "academic commune" with her and ANOTHER man whose marriage offer she had rejected.... ?!?!?!?!

Got my hands on Mary Shelley's 1815 Goodreads challenge!

It feels really exciting to have an opportunity to read it, but I also regret to inform you...

There's a lot of Voltaire as well though... Also I'm aware of her mother's thoughts on Rousseau (did read him but not a big fan of his view of women, surprise surprise). Not sure if Mary's are documented though!

That would be a fun list to get through. 🤓

currently maybe possibly single-handedly crashing whatever servers eton hosts its archived student newspapers on because me and a friend are getting obsessed with a single outspoken prefect from 1883

@queenlua Happily! This is going to be long, so here's some set dressing first:

Eton College, for anyone unfamiliar, is a prestigious boys' school in England that has famously educated MANY MANY politicians, royals, nobility, and other assorted famous people. All you really need to know about it is that's it's incredibly posh and expensive and exclusive

The Eton Society (called “Pop” internally) is a self-selecting body of senior students at Eton that have historically held a decent amount of power at the school. If you’ve ever attended a school with a prefect system/house system etc you probably know a little bit about how obnoxious this kind of group can get. Now imagine they're all called Lord Godfrey Pickerington or something. Are you getting it? Is the set being dressed? Good.

Now that the scene is set, here’s our tale!!

I stumbled into Eton’s archives while doing research for a fanfiction and we’ll just leave that admission where it is!! It was in reading old issues of their student-run paper, The Chronicle, from 1883 that myself and @carebewear started becoming fixated on one guy in particular.

Cecil B. Gedge (from this point on known as Gedge) was a member of the Eton Society in 1883/84. He won a few Science awards during his time there (Biology!!) and seemed to like rowing during school sports events. He went on to become a barrister, which will make sense once you know more about him.

The best part of Gedge, though, is his appearances in the minutes for the Eton Society meetings. At least at Gedge’s time, the Eton Society seemed really fond of staging debates (more like loosely organised discussions) on a wide variety of topics.

Here are some of the riveting questions they discussed!

And my personal favourite: "Are Ghosts Real?"

(They were very divided)

Gedge first came to our attention in debate about the annexation of New Guinea, in which he apparently started an "abusive attack on the British army and missionaries":

Wow! Based Gedge!? He continues to spit period-typical truths about things like how we shouldn't tax bicycles actually because it would disproportionately affect poor people. YIMBY Gedge?? He would've loved light rail.

The final nail in our Gedge obsession was a debate on women's suffrage, in which Gedge vehemently advocates for women's right to vote and then gets no supporters at the end of the meeting. But I appreciate that he said it anyway and kept saying it. He is more persecuted that Christ, to me.

Here are some more, from anti-conscription sentiment to indirectly calling his classmates stupid to weirding everyone out by saying he wants to donate his body to science (his friend dissecting him for fun):

We started getting the feeling people might not have liked Gedge that much, mainly since one of the Society members wrote a poem about all his friends and Gedge isn't in it.

In 1884, there was some extended drama in the Chronicle where someone whom I groundlessly suspect was Gedge under a pseudonym ("A Socialist"), wrote to the editor complaining that the "debates" published by the Eton Society were "bad" (genuine quote) and that they should make a REAL debate society at the school that ALL boys, not just the self-selected seniors, could participate in:

To make a long story short most of the vocal members of the Eton Society threw up their hands at this and refused to do anything, basically boiling down to "Just because we're the prefects of the school doesn't mean we should have to actually DO anything!! Unfair!!" and also this quote which reads exactly like at least a thousand real tweets I've seen in my life

Liberal. Gedge, of course, was there giving practical suggestions, but the discussion was ultimately cut short because their principal died and they had to push a memorial issue of the paper. We have a working theory that the staff might've used that interruption as an opportunity to get the boys to cut it the fuck out.

Anyway it's a little unclear what happens to Gedge after that. He isn't credited as being in the 1884 Eton Society in the larger school register but it's unclear if that's because he wasn't re-elected or if he just graduated. Either way, he went on to become a barrister in London, which makes a lot of sense. Sadly though, he passed away in WW1, which we were really normal about

Thank you Lt. Gedge, for truly embodying the eternal spirit of an outspoken debate-kid, a friend to the lefties, a proto-yimby, a terminal back-talker, and the kid in a biology class that's a little too excited for the dissections. I hope your life, however short, was a rich and bright one. Thanks for the incredibly entertaining afternoon, brother 🫡

Philippe Rousseau, 1816-1887 - The rat who withdrew from the world

OKAY YOU KNOW WHO THIS MADE ME THINK OF

(The fact that the artist's name is Rousseau makes this 100x better as well)

theres so few trans men in the past because theyre all fucking buried as women😐

oh yea this chic definitely pretended to be a dude her entire fucking life because she just wanted to be a doctor that bad. i genuinely hope you die

Look, I know we shouldn’t use modern terms on historic people, but the dude used he/him pronouns, lived as a man 24/7, and "in the event of his death, strict precautions should be adopted to prevent any examination of his person", and that the body should be "buried in [the] bed sheets without further inspection".

He wanted to be buried as a man and not be outed posthumously. If that’s not trans idk what is.

another L on terf island :(

Listen, I totally agree that we need to highlight stories of great women from history, as they have been pushed aside until recently.

You know whose stories have been disregarded much, much more though?

Taking the stories of trans men to fulfil your great gals quota is not the way to go.

Straight friend groups be like ‘the sporty one’ ‘the pretty one’ ‘someone’s crush’ ‘the mean girl’ ‘the tall one’ ‘frat boy’

Gay friend groups be like ‘twink who still looks 20 after all these years, the rumors surrounding him would make Satan blush’ ‘painter filled with longing so severe its ruining his life’ and ‘the worst influence you’ve ever met’

i know the horrifically bad interpretations of mary shelley’s life are a symptom of her being really famous and are important for the general ecosystem but my biggest problem with them is that they’re usually really boring. just. look, there are more interesting ways to disrespect this woman’s memory, you know?

Same energy:

| Schach Dem König! |

Adelheid von Walldorf my beloved. Also holy shit I’m so fucking proud of this one

if I was a man in the 1810s-20s I would sit down at my girlfriend’s feet and disassociate while looking at the trippy trimming on her skirt. and perhaps i’d also write pamphlets or poems or something like that

If I ever pulled off a reverse Orlando this is what I would do btw