When Would You Like to Have Lived?

This is a great topic to explore. It was posed on my Writers' Forum a while ago. I've also joined a History Forum and it is a question there, as well.

What would have been your ideal place in history? We look at history books and decide when it would have been a great time to live.

Well, first of all, I'm female. So unless I only step back less than a hundred years, I have to give up my first class citizenship and become an automatic second class citizen just by virtue of my gender. I won't have the rights and freedoms I currently enjoy. Sorry, that's the reality of history.

If I were male or willing to give up my autonomy, I could travel back in time and perhaps be … well, a serf. Most people were not free no matter where they lived until democratic practices came into fashion. Feudal or aristocratic societies did not favor the common man, let alone the common woman. So kiss your autonomy goodbye.

But let's say you are somehow going to go from one of the hoi polloi today to one of the rich and semi-famous of yesteryear. Okay, you are a titled or landed person with control over your own life and have a lifestyle beyond the common drudge who serves you, willingly or unwillingly. You aren't the servant who is bowing and scraping or even the butler who only needs to bow, but you are the Master of the House. How are you with a sword? Or a mace? How well do you sit a horse? While wielding a sword?

You are in Europe and have a castle at your disposal. How great is that? But it's winter. Oh my. You are cold. You are rich and cold. There is no central heat and castles were at best, drafty. Your beautiful tapestries are hung in order to keep out most of the wind and you have servants to light fires all over the castle. Of course, this creates a lot of smoke and smudge, but at least you are warmer than the serfs who support you.

And you would like to read something. Even the aristocracy was often illiterate, but you are one of the lucky few who aren't. And, you have something new to read. Some hand copied Bible probably; they were the most frequent type of book produced. So, it's six PM and you have some time to read. But it's winter, in England. It's already dark and gloomy. You can't switch on a light, they haven't been invented yet. So your servant lights an oil lamp. They don't make much light, but what they lack in light they make up in smoke and more smudge.

If you happened to go back in time and be one of the masses, how in the world would you cope? How do even light the dang oil lamp, if you happened to get hold of one? There aren't matches yet, so you can't do that. And you certainly can't flick your Bic.

But you are Lord of the Manor and you would like a little late night snack. So you go to the larder and pour yourself some … well, it can't be much. There was no refrigerator, there is a larder. There is room temperature milk and since this is winter, it's cold. Now, if it were a bright summer evening, it wouldn't be cold milk, because of the whole room temperature thing. And you can't get most of the liquid refreshment we have today. Let me tell, I've tasted mead and it isn't all that great.

If you go back as just a regular Joe, there are other problems. You are cold and so need to stoke up the fire in the fireplace. If THAT went out, same problem with the whole start up the lamp. But, let's pretend you could get it started. Now you are hungry. How do you even bake bread without an oven? What exactly are you going to eat? How many ways can you make soup? No chips or pretzels, no soda, no fast food of any sort. You will be lucky to see any meat for special occasions, so I hope you like a subsistence vegetarian diet.

How will you support yourself? You know no useful skills. Being able to format text in Microsoft Word isn't going to be very useful. Even being literate is fairly useless, because books are VERY expensive. Knowing how to write is useless unless you also learned how to write with a quill. Paper is also VERY expensive.

Almost everything we know and use today wasn't around in the current fashion a few hundred years ago. And many people choose to go back even farther in time.

There was no treatment for many of the diseases that are slight annoyances today. Diabetics died young. Hemophiliacs died young. Appendicitis killed. High blood pressure killed. Accidents killed. Childbirth killed. Life was short and mean. The average age of death came decades faster than today. Someone my age would be old, today I'm "middle aged" and can count on about another thirty years alive.

When we read the history books, we think of the glory or beauty depicted. Some people mentioned the gorgeous art works or elevated societies. Well, yes. But we have that today for the lucky who have the money to enjoy it. Unless you are insisting your time travel is going to let you go back in time and enter a different economic class, you better be prepared to simply starve or freeze to death. And that doesn't seem like much fun.