| The CBB http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/ | |
| Anything wrong with bottom? http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5593 |
|
| Author: | MJKB [ Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:22 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Anything wrong with bottom? |
I'm re reading Coming of Age and was amused once again by Prudence Dawburn's chair tiilting accident in Mary-Lou's prep. In reply to ML's query if she has hurt herself, Prudence says "..yyes...my tail..." a response that sends Margot into fits of laughter. Now, did Margot laugh because Prudence uses this rather usaul name for that part of her anatomy or because she has injured THAT part of her anatomy? What is wrong with the word bottom? It's hardly the height of vulgarity even in CS time, and if any reference to that part of the body is so embarrassing, why have the incident take place at all? |
|
| Author: | abbeybufo [ Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:49 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
'Bottom' was considered quite a rude word by children in the 1950s - we would go to extreme lengths to avoid using it in public, 'tail' being the one considered most polite, but 'backside' [which I've always disliked] was also in common parlance. Later, in our early teens, we used 'bottom' as a swear word - until we learnt the 'proper' expletives 
|
|
| Author: | Alison H [ Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:40 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
I think Margot is amused because of the rather pained way in which Prudence speaks, and also it is kind of funny when someone falls off a chair anyway, as long as they haven't hurt themselves badly! I tend to say "backside" ... I always feel that there's something vaguely rude about using the word "bottom" but I don't know why  .
|
|
| Author: | Abi [ Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:26 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
I always thought Margot was reacting to the word 'tail' - which always seemed to me a bizarre way of putting it as I didn't know it was in common usage. I can imagine 'bottom' seeming a bit rude - I don't remember the word being used in any other children's books of the time off the top of my head. |
|
| Author: | Ariel [ Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:12 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
I always read it as she meant she'd hurt her coccyx - tail bone - but missed off the 'bone' and that was what amused Margot (or Margot was just in a giggly mood and it wouldn't have taken much to set her off). It didn't occur to me that she meant her bottom, since, as I remember, she was badly shaken and bruised - more so than had she landed on a more padded part of her body - and had to sit on a cushion for days after. |
|
| Author: | JayB [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 1:04 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
I also always thought she meant her coccyx. I thought that she either didn't know the word, or couldn't think of it in her shaken state. I don't think you'd hurt your actual bottom - the padded part - very much just by falling off a chair. 'Seat' was the polite way of saying bottom when I was growing up. 'Backside' was considered rude, and 'bum' even ruder. |
|
| Author: | Kathy_S [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:39 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
I also assumed coccyx, based on pain level (*is experienced klutz*), but did figure the giggling was related to "tail." When there are so many words for an anatomical part, it does tend to be because of endless layering and shifting of euphemisms. Basically no word ends up being acceptable. Apparently the word that was most polite for us as children is quite rude and means something else entirely in the UK. From semi-polite to wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap, I would have ranked the word used here, then rear end, bottom, butt, and a__. |
|
| Author: | abbeybufo [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:58 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
JayB wrote: I
also always thought she meant her coccyx. I thought that she either
didn't know the word, or couldn't think of it in her shaken state. I
don't think you'd hurt your actual bottom - the padded part - very much
just by falling off a chair. 'Seat' was the polite way of saying bottom when I was growing up. 'Backside' was considered rude, and 'bum' even ruder. I'd forgotten 'bum' 
Yes, that was also considered rude, though just, I think, politer than
'bottom' in my circle of aquaintance [i.e. junior school]. One of my
early 'swears' was 'Bum, bottom and drawers!'  'Seat' was also an acceptable term. |
|
| Author: | CBW [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 11:58 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
didn't Flanders and Swan do a 'rude' song where the chorus ran somthing like "Pee, Poo, belly, bum, draws"? |
|
| Author: | joyclark [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:16 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
According to Google, it went like this: ma's out, pa's out lets talk rude pee, po, belly, bum, drawers lets run through the garden in the nude pee, po, belly, bum ,drawers lets write rude words all down our street stick out our tongues at the people we meet lets have an intellectual treat pee, po, belly, bum, drawers. |
|
| Author: | MJKB [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:56 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
I don't remember the word being used in any other children's books of the time off the top of my head." Quote from Abi. Perhaps not in GO in 30s-50's but it was used by Walter Blythe in A of I. (I always seem to be quoting AoGG). It occurs when he listens in to the Ladie's Aid quilting party in Ingleside, and, as one can imagine, it causes quite a sensation. It's interesting to take stock of the immense changes that have occurred since the 60's when body parts were first celebrated in song in the musical Hair. I'd really forgotten how catclysmic that was and how easily society before that could be offended by the mere mention of 'rude bits.' |
|
| Author: | Sunglass [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 6:12 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
MJKB wrote: I'd
really forgotten how catclysmic that was and how easily society before
that could be offended by the mere mention of 'rude bits.' And not just 'rude bits' but in EBD any reference to bodily functions is absolutely off limits. No one ever goes to the loo (we have to speculate that there are actually toilets in the Splasheries and bathrooms), even small children and babies. In A Future, in the middle of a long car journey in which EBD goes into quite a lot of detail about Felix and Bruno throwing up and needing Kwells we're told Quote: Len walked off the two F’s and Cecil and presently returned with them comfortable and refreshed. which I assume means she took them to pee behind a bush, and Geoff, a small baby who clearly needs changing and feeding after a long day, and whose mind we step into for a minute, apparently wants Quote: his supper, a clean nighty and his nice, comfy cot. Would a reference to changing a baby's nappy really be so unsuitable? The Geoff bit always makes me laugh - I mean, I know what she means, but the idea of a small baby longing for 'a clean nighty' (not a clean romper or babygro or dress or whatever he would have been wearing, but a nighty, because a well-behaved EBD baby wouldn't dream of not changing into a nighty when it's bedtime) when nappy is very obviously what is being hinted at, strikes me as funny... I can see to a certain extent why, at the time of writing, she pussyfoots around the specifics of Joey breastfeeding her babies, but I find completely avoiding the mention of nappy changing a bit odder. Are babies' bottoms also unsuitable? |
|
| Author: | MJKB [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 6:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
Ahhh, but she came close to a nappy reference in Jo of. David has been crying persistently in the garden all afternoon so Madge, in direct defiance of Dr. Jem's advice (command?) brings him into the house, undresses him and checks for PINS!!!! Now, could she get any closer? |
|
| Author: | andydaly [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 8:53 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
MJKB, I think the horror that ensued over Walter Blythe popping his head out and mentioning Big Jim's bottom in A of I was less to do with his use of the word, and more to do with his having been there at all to hear the conversation - the women at the quilting have been gossiping about all manner of subjects unsuitable for young ears, and the ladies are flustered in case they may have said something of which the doctor's wife might disapprove. Tail was certainly a euphemism for the bottom, as opposed to the tailbone, when I was growing up, but I think Margot's fit of the giggles here is caused by the fact that she is in a situation where she knows she can't laugh (like laughing in church), which makes the mildly humorous sight of Prudence falling over hysterically funny and Prudence's mortified reference to her own "rude bits" (I love that phrase  ) is just the icing on the cake.
|
|
| Author: | JS [ Mon Jan 26, 2009 6:02 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
In Room with a View, one of the elderly ladies was shocked by the liberal Mr Emerson's use of the word 'stomach'. I must say that we (in our house) tend to giggle at the word 'bottom' in pretend (actual?) childishness after a Blackadder episode where they kept saying things 'sound a bit like bottom'. |
|
| Author: | MaryR [ Mon Jan 26, 2009 8:49 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
Like Abbeybufo, in the fifties we would never have dreamt of saying the using *bottom* or any other of the *ruder* body parts, ie breast, etc. Once in the senior school and learning French, we did resort to *derriere*. I also remember that we never used *loo* or *toilet* - it was the lavatory, a word I absolutely loathe. I have to say, though, in my teaching career, even up to two years ago, when I would say to a child, quite deliberately, *Sit on your bottom! NOW!" there would be a look of shock that I would dare to say *that* word among the juniors. It got quiet, however, and that was the whole point.
|
|
| Author: | andydaly [ Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:28 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
It has also occurred to me that Prudence's use of the word "tail" has provided an already giggly Margot with the mental picture of Prudence with an actual tail, like a squirrel or something - perhaps this is what Margot is laughing at? |
|
| Author: | Sunglass [ Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:21 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
andydaly wrote: MJKB,
I think the horror that ensued over Walter Blythe popping his head out
and mentioning Big Jim's bottom in A of I was less to do with his use
of the word, and more to do with his having been there at all to hear
the conversation - the women at the quilting have been gossiping about
all manner of subjects unsuitable for young ears... Yes - out of all the things they might have gossiped about (but didn't, to Anne's relief), the thing that's seen as most unsuitable for a child's ears is nothing physical, but the account of a vaguely sadistic man's funeral, where the sister of his dead first wife comes to laugh over his coffin... It's interesting, though, that a novel aimed at much the same young readership in 1939 had no trouble with 'bottom' - LMM does use it occasionally in other places, too, usually in relation to hired boys' ragged trousers - while EBD won't hear of it, even though she's always writing about people falling flat on theirs while ski-ing or tilting their chairs - or, for that matter, heroically tucking their skirt into their knickers to lead girls across a brook in spate... The shockedness at 'stomach' in EM Forster is, I think, to do with an upper/upper-middle class sense, early in the 20thc, that talking about one's insides was rather non-U. There's an Elizabeth Bowen novel from 1929 where some Anglo-Irish aristocrats are rather disgusted by visiting middle-class British Army wives, because they use baby-language, and are 'liable to talk about their insides'. I don't think EBD can be subscribing to this, though, by her time of writing, as everyone in the CS world (not just doctors) endlessly discusses illnesses - though admittedly, it's generally lungs 'being touched' and 'the heart' being weak, rather than anything more indelicate, apart from Joey's mysteriously misplaced organ... |
|
| Author: | JS [ Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:28 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
Quote: The
shockedness at 'stomach' in EM Forster is, I think, to do with an
upper/upper-middle class sense, early in the 20thc, that talking about
one's insides was rather non-U. There's an Elizabeth Bowen novel from
1929 where some Anglo-Irish aristocrats are rather disgusted by
visiting middle-class British Army wives, because they use
baby-language, and are 'liable to talk about their insides'. Yes, I've read somewhere else a 'lady' having to resort to calling a stomach 's' and I seem to remember that Agatha Christie has Miss Marple saying that in her young day it wasn't done to mention stomach. In Forster, I thought it was underlining that the Emersons were free-spirits/liberals/non-conventional, but I can see that it might have been a class pointer too, now you say that, Sunglass. |
|
| Author: | Josette [ Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:16 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
I'm with andydaly here, I thought Margot was laughing at the idea of Prudence with an actual tail - especially as EBD goes on to say that "she did not mean to be funny" - it suggests to me that Margot had interpreted the word in a way Prudence didn't intend. |
|
| Author: | JennieP [ Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:18 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
I always thought Joey's mis-placed organ sounded like she left it on a bus or train - like characters keep doing with their brollies... |
|
| Author: | Ariel [ Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:32 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
I always thought (hoped?) Joey's misplaced organ was some sort of prolapse... oops, there it goes again - and there's no young-reader-friendly way of explaining that. Maybe not, considering she went on and had more babies after. But I can't imagine, after 11, her down-belows were in good nick. |
|
| Author: | Robert Andrews [ Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:59 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Anything wrong with bottom? |
Over here in the States, to a child of the 1980's, "bottom" is probably one of the most neutral words to use for that part! To me, it actually feels childish. The terms "rear end" and derriere (from the French) are also common and not too offensive, in the sense that they could be used in front of and by small children without offense. "Butt" is also a common word, but it is cruder (though it isn't obscene or a swear word). Many parents over here probably don't want their children using this term. |
|
| All times are UTC | |
| Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group http://www.phpbb.com/ | |