THE GREATEST narrative paintings of the nineteenth century are operas on canvas. The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche is a stunning example. Although Delaroche was French, he specialized in scenes from English history. Christopher Wood writes in Victorian Paintings that Delaroche and others helped launch a craze for narrative history among the Victorians.

These pictures all caused a sensation at the time, with their combination of accurate costumes, realistic settings and a strong sense of drama. The Execution of Lady Jane Grey could indeed represent the final scene of an opera. The success of these pictures sent English historical painters scurrying off to study their history books, consult costume experts and pore over books of old engravings… Victorian history paintings did for the nineteenth century what the epic film was to do for the twentieth.

These historical paintings were distinctive in that they tended to focus on intimate moments in the lives of the famous, rather than grand scenes, and were in accord with the Victorians’ love for what Thackeray called “a gentle sentiment.” What is most interesting in Delaroche’s painting of 1833 is the way he portrays a child-like quality of the blindfolded Jane Grey, who is illuminated by gold light and reaches out into the darkness with her hand as if to grasp at support or something solid, and the emotions of those who were with her. One feels as if one is viewing an intensely private moment.

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RANDY, a reader at VFR, has these comments about the presidential debate:

… Obama was confident and was not as inept as the conservative media wants to believe. They are delusional. I looked at a few snippets on the YouTube video. One thing that struck me is how there is no real difference between the two. In one part of the video Romney said that he agreed with Obama that the government will not take in less money as a result of his (Romney’s) tax proposals. What? Is he serious? (more…)

IN HER ongoing series of posts on the ugliness of modern life, Kidist Paulos Asrat wrote recently about a new French perfume:

The decadence of modern culture continues with the legendary perfume house Givenchy releasing a new scent clearly named after Elizabeth Short, the murdered and mutilated California woman who became known as the Black Dahlia. She got her moniker through malicious gossip in Hollywood, where the legend is that she wore a signiature black suit to attract men as a prostitute. She went to California to try her luck in acting while doing all kinds of odd jobs from modelling to waitressing. Some of the men she attracted, including a string of boyfriends, became suspects in her murder. (more…)

IN an interview with Glamour magazine, Obama spells out his views on the proper role of women. They should go to college (preferably with federal subsidies) and get well-paying jobs. The government has an obligation to keep them from having too many children so that they can achieve these goals. And, one can infer from his statements, women must unceasingly compare themselves to men and envy what men have. Compare Obama’s philosophy with that of Theodore Roosevelt, who said in 1905:

No piled-up wealth, no splendor of material growth, no brilliance of artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage, common sense, and decency, unless he works hard and is willing at need to fight hard; and unless the average woman is a good wife, a good mother, able and willing to perform the first and greatest duty of womanhood, able and willing to bear, and to bring up as they should be brought up, healthy children, sound in body, mind, and character, and numerous enough so that the race shall increase and not decrease.

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VINCENT C. writes:

I AM sure other commentators have remarked on the remarkable difference between the Romney and Obama families at the end of last night’s debate. The Obama daughters could not have been there because they were too young, but even if they were, it wouldn’t have made much difference. The Romneys swelled the stage, leaving the President and his wife with no choice but to be introduced to so many and blend into the crowd. On a national scale, the large family is an anomaly, but it now forms a significant and growing minority that will become more vocal with time. Almost all large families are found among white, religious minorities, including Mormons, Amish, Hasidic Jews, devout Protestants and traditional Catholics. [As a commenter points out below, this is not true. It is more accurate to say that a majority of those with large families of more than four children, families that are intact and possess a stable culture that prizes large, intact families, are among these distinct groups.]

For all their talk of collective harmony, liberals cannot produce, and will never produce, that most fundamental unit of group solidarity: the large family. [It is more accurate to say liberals cannot produce a culture that prizes and encourages large intact families.]

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THERE WERE moments during last night’s presidential debate when I felt like I was watching two insurance salesmen selling their policies, down to all the boring and technical minor clauses. When they were talking about health care, I wouldn’t have been surprised if one pulled out an X-ray and said, “You see, if you break a bone right there, you will get $4,000 for rehab.” That’s what the presidential election has become, a matter of who has the best deal.

I thought Romney was terrific, as far as that format goes. He was energetic, passionate and in total command of his material. But, except for a few brief moments, he was not inspiring. But then he couldn’t be inspiring, unless he possessed extraordinary courage. That would involve answering the questions, “Who are we? Are we a people?” These are questions entirely off limits in our Tower of Babel.

Most people don’t really care about money more than anything. Most people can even endure significant hardship for the sake of some greater good. But most people can easily be whipped up into an obsession with money by politicians who cannot sound themes of grandeur and collective destiny because that would involve addressing those vital questions, “Who are we? Are we a people?” That would involve answering the second of those questions in the affirmative. If we are not a people, there really isn’t much to say, is there? Might as well focus on those technicalities.

Neither of the two candidates dared to say that even people who are unemployed and undergoing terrible disappointment might have a reason for hope and courage because they are part of some greater good.

Here’s a relevant comment from Pilgrim’s Pride at The Americanist:

There was a time, not so very long ago, when “America” meant something more than grabbing as much money however you can.

It meant a people, united by blood, history and destiny, living together on this empty, dangerous continent so that they could live in Liberty to worship and glorify their God the best they could. (more…)

  AT DoubleThinkNot, Thor Christopher writes of the recent torture and murder of a white car dealer in South Africa, one of the many vicious killings since apartheid that you will never read about in American newspapers. Remember all those campus protests against apartheid years ago? There are no protests against these heinous crimes. The killing of a family this July, in which a 12-year-old boy was drowned in a bathtub after hearing his mother raped and murdered in the next room and his father shot --- oh, you didn't hear about it, eh? I wonder why.

CHRISTINE writes:

A recent comment you made has had me wondering. It was in the post “The Have-It-All Mentality”:

“Part of the importance of college today is also that it is a place for young people to meet, and parents know that. Therefore they have to spend big bucks for their daughters to attend college and their daughters must make big bucks to send their own daughters to college someday.”

I know this was the case for me. I graduated from college five years ago. Had it not been for the (extracurricular) experiences I had there, the people I met, and the ideas I was exposed to (all of which were discovered on my own and completely unconnected with my courses or any actual effort of the university, but which were irrefutably tied up with the college “environment”), I should be a very different person now.  And I did, in fact, meet my husband there as well.  For these reasons – even despite the horrible debt it left me with – I will never say that I regret going.  But is this really what college should be?  The bachelors’ degree and teaching certificate which I was “officially” there for only got used for a short time before I left the working world and got married.  And I knew all along that should I end up getting married, that’s what I wanted to do. (more…)

THE female punk rockers who broke into a Moscow Cathedral and staged an obscene protest, resulting in a two-year jail term, are now viewed as brave dissidents by European leftists.  They have been nominated for the European Parliament’s annual Sakharov Peace Prize. J.C. Von Krempach writes in an article posted at LifeSite News: (more…)

SPEAKING OF female faces in photographs, here is the profound and penetratingly beautiful face of Thérèse of Liseux, the famous nineteenth century saint. Marian Horvat writes of her face:

What does the face of the real Thérèse reveal? It is a physiognomy that is delicate but strong, sweetly serene but intensely reflective, a face stamped with the tranquil acceptance of suffering and the life of the Cross. There is the strong chin, the firmly set lips with a hint of smile, a gaze that has lost nothing of its childhood innocence and, at the same time, reveals a person who views the world without superficiality or optimism. In the real face of St. Thérèse, one sees a soul of character and the self-mastery of a saint. (more…)

AT THE literary journal Praesidium, Peter Singleton analyses photographs of female celebrities over the years, looking for the qualities that make for exceptional beauty. His essay is perceptive and interesting, despite a clumsy opening and some verbosity. The most beautiful faces, he says, are those that suggest moral and spirtual depth. He notices that in recent years prominent foreheads and brows are less common. He writes: (more…)

R., a female reader, writes:

I’m a long-term fan of your website, and visit every day to check for updates. I thought that you, and your readers, would find this interesting:

My younger sister is 17 years old. At her school (a private girl’s school, nonetheless) a mandatory class is ‘Modern Social Issues.’ Every term, students are given a topic which they discuss in full. They form debate teams to discuss the pros and cons of the topic, write essays or poems, research articles, and so on. This past term, the topic was, “Gender Oppression in the Modern Age: Is Feminism Still Viable in Modern Society?” Quite a mouthful, and quite an easy topic for feminist-raised young women to think about.

After extensive research on the subject (said ‘research’ being mostly whining about the poor, poor women), each student was to write an essay discussing in detail the subject, and what it means to her personally. As my sister has had a traditional upbringing (only soured by our mother’s struggle with cancer and inability to homeschool us), hers was by far the most interesting, most honest, and, of course, the lowest marked essay of the class. The teacher went so far to suggest that she have ‘catchup’ classes to better comprehend the topic.

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  I ACCIDENTALLY MIXED UP comments for the two entries (here and here) related to Hanna Rosin's book. I think I have straightened it all out.

BEN J. writes:

Here’s an article from the Telegraph about a study done in Norway that indicates a significantly higher divorce rate among couples who share housework. You might find it interesting, although you and I wouldn’t need to spend a lot of money doing a study to come to the same conclusion. People are happier in their normal sex roles…who’d thunk it? (more…)

AT Oz Conservative, Mark Richardson writes about the Jill Meagher case:

The news here in Australia has been dominated by a murder and abduction case in inner-city Melbourne. A beautiful woman, Jill Meagher, who migrated from Ireland and who married a local man, had been drinking till the early hours of the morning with work colleagues. When she decided to leave, one of the men offered to walk her home but she declined. Walking home alone she was raped and murdered. The alleged perpetrator was arrested, in part, because of evidence from CCTV cameras.

It’s a desperately sad thing to read about and I couldn’t help but think about the moment she turned down the offer of a male friend to walk her home. (more…)

TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL columnist Margaret Wente repeats approvingly Hanna Rosin’s thesis on “The End of Men,” which is that the reason men are lagging in the modern economy is that women are better at everything and men have become, economically speaking, an evolutionary maladaptation. Men are “cardboard” and women, because of their great adaptability, are “plastic.” She writes: (more…)