On Fishwives

Ladies and gentlemen, we've been sold a bill of good about fishwives!

What do you think of when you hear 'fishwives?' Old wives tale, swearing like sailors, vulgar, angry, brutish? Anyway, something bad.

The negative connotation remains when you hear the word, but I don't believe it should. (You may not hear it often, but when you do, it's negative.) I believed the rhetoric that to be a "fishwife" was to be a poor, vulgar, angry woman with little or no self control.

I saw a picture - one picture - which changed my whole view about this. It was printed in a book about Scotland. None of the pictures were newer than the late 1890s, I believe. Naturally, they were all in a sepia tone that gave the book a lovely atmosphere.

Most of them were of buildings or landscapes.

However, a few showed nobles, poor people, even orphans, in their daily lives. (Sometimes the nobles were stiffly arranged for portraits.)

One picture was of a group of 'fishwives,' i.e. the wives of fishermen, who worked with fish themselves, all gathered together around tables working together doing something rather messy with fish.

I do not believe I am exaggerating when I say they were the happiest group of women I had ever seen in a photograph.

Not dressed richly, but nonetheless clothed well, they each wore white aprons, had strong-looking hands obviously accustomed to work (they looked as strong as many men's hands), and wore happy, laughing smiles on their faces.

It was obvious, to me at least, that they enjoyed working together, talking, and being outdoors and accomplishing something.

There was NOTHING vulgar about them, unless it is vulgar to use your hands, to be healthy, and to smile unaffectedly.

I'll tell you, I envied those ladies. To have such supreme confidence in their own physical skills, their friends and co-workers, and their own necessity in their lives & with their husbands' professions. They shone with health, comraderie, and honest happiness. What could be better than that? And what jealous Victorian sensibilities could have kept the negative stereotype of 'fishwife' alive about them?

In the age that promoted "fishwives" as a negative thing, an insult, the writing was mostly done by men, and rich people. I don't suppose a single fisherman or fishwife were heard in printed material on any subject.

People still have biases today. And they aren't always obvious. I guess you always have to look deeper than you think, to understand what's going on with what people say.

But if you notice any honest profession becoming an insult, take notice of who's saying it, and why.

People can reveal so much by what they say. As long as you remember to look. :)