Sunday, July 7, 2013

Determined destiny

There is an outrageous amount of history in Spain. I am totally not at all into history, but when you know a place has been around for centuries, that's a little mind-blowing. To stand in a spot and think of all the other people have stood there, and what kind of life they were having, is amazing. Apparently, in the super-olden days, everyone in the family had the same job. For generations. Like, whatever your great-grandfather did for a living, that's what you were going to do. He worked on building a building, and when you stopped going to school you were going to work on building that same building too. Plus, you worked on that building for decades knowing that you would never see it completed, and that your son would also work on it, as would your grandson and great-grandson.

Of course all the girls don't count. They just cranked out the sons and made the meals to keep them fortified enough to work on those buildings. It is weird to think of all those generations of women who were content enough to be in only the supporting roles for so long. Until they weren't, I guess. Because they had to eventually get upset - otherwise things never could have changed.

3 comments:

Kizz said...

I think it's probable that a lot of those women were not content but just couldn't see any other options. In the same way the great grandson was stuck building the same damn cathedral, the great granddaughter was stuck getting pregnant and scrubbing floors and it took a whole lot for anyone to even see that there might be other options, much less take advantage of them.

Anonymous said...

On the other hand, such sons were taught a trade and had work waiting for them in the family business, things not as easily possible in today's economy.

Are you headed to Israel on this trip? Decades and centuries will seem like nothing when you visit a place that has had a Jewish presence for a few thousand years.

Anonymous said...

Remember that history is mostly written by the men. To a large extent, we don't actually know what women were doing because no one wrote it down.

Since women are humans, they were probably doing all kinds of normal human things, like always, and it's been erased from history.