Jayna Rohslau, ‘22

February 2020

You may be single this Valentines Day, but at least you live in the 21st century.

It was the night of the ball, and your life was over.

As you watched, ladies and gentlemen in red and pink silks glided across the floor.  Their feet seemed so graceful, unlike yours marooned in the corner of the ballroom. A tear slid down your cheek.  Why hadn’t any gentlemen asked you to dance? This ball had been your one opportunity to advance in society, but you had squandered it.  Now you would have to leave the capital and return to your family farm where you would presumably live a life of miserable solitude and quiet desperation, toiling unhappily away until your flesh turned to dust.  Only five and ten, and unless you procured a husband, dead on your feet.

Although wait a minute, something about this doesn’t seem right.  Wake up! Dear god, you’ve fallen asleep in history again. Oh, and your professor is going on and on about the Regency era.  Oh, and it’s Valentines Day and you still don’t have a boyfriend. But those people do and they’re holding hands, isn’t it sweet?  But at least you don’t live in the past, right? Right??!!!

1200s

You are an English peasant living in a small and obscure village.  Your defining characteristic is that you have terrible teeth. But everyone around you has terrible teeth, so you’re not self-conscious of your terrible teeth or the sad fact that you smell like a pig sty.  Speaking of pig stys, your parents (who have nothing more than practically toothless gums) plan to marry you to a pig. Not a literal one, silly, but the pig who lives down the street. He’s double your age, an old man of eight and twenty.  You don’t want to marry him, but he’s a very successful pig farmer and your parents want the connections. On the day you wed, you look into his mouth and see a dark putrid abyss of scum. He’s never taken a bath in his life. Actually, that would be a lie.  He’s taken two. Also, he has ten children from his first marriage that from the age of fifteen onwards you spend your time caring for.

1700s

You are a noblewoman living in France during the Revolution.  All things considered, you have a pretty great life. You used to be Spanish, but that was before your parents and your husband’s parents worked out the marriage agreement.  Your parents were happy because your husband is rich, your husbands parents were happy because your parents are rich, and your happy because your husband looks pretty good for all of the French inbreeding and whatnot.  Your marriage is happy, and you have many pretty dresses which help counteract the blackness of your teeth. You married your husband when you were fifteen, and you never for one instant regret your vows. Well, maybe for one instant.  Five years later when the guillotine is about to whack off your head, you think to yourself “maybe this wasn’t the best idea.”

1900s

You are an Irish immigrant who came to New York City in search of work.  You wanted to make your way in the world, and never planned on falling in love.  Or worse, falling period. You met a fellow immigrant and all was well and good before you got yourself pregnant.  Now you live in a tenement building in Brooklyn sharing your room with your husband and three children, and your bathroom with the whole building.  You work two jobs, and you barely make ends meet. Well at least your husband is hot, right? Wrong. He’s a serial cheater with a drinking problem, but you can’t leave him because you rely on his income as a factory worker when he does have a job.  You remember being fifteen and you bitterly rue the day you met him.

So don’t you feel lucky to be single?