{"id":1172,"date":"2018-09-19T10:24:42","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T14:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2018-09-19T10:24:42","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T14:24:42","slug":"witchery-and-tea-a-ladys-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2018\/09\/19\/witchery-and-tea-a-ladys-weapon\/","title":{"rendered":"Witchery and Tea: A Lady&#8217;s Weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This passage describes the act of making tea as an occupation for women. One that allows her to \u201creign omnipotent\u201d amongst the visitors in her home (Braddon, 222). With this power, the act of making tea also provides for a darker undertone: \u201cThe most feminine and most domestic of all occupations imparts a magic harmony to her every movement, a witchery to her every glance\u201d (Braddon, 222). Women are grouped with witchcraft here because they have power in this task and the loss of power is a point of unease for a guest. This passage mentions the \u201cfloating mists from the boiling liquid in which she infuses the soothing herbs, whose secrets are known to her alone\u201d which tells us that in drinking what is given to them a guest trusts their host. It is a social act to receive people into your home and to serve them a beverage of your choice. The lady of the house has that power in these situations. She would make the mixture. She would pour the tea into portions of her choice. If one comes into the Lady\u2019s home, she decides how they will be served. In this passage we even see the narrator mention the possibility of the task being given to servants, \u201c To send a couple hulking men about amongst your visitors, distributing a mixture made in the housekeeper\u2019s room, is to reduce the most social and friendly of ceremonies to a formal giving out of rations\u201d (Braddon, 222). In giving the task to someone else, the entire ceremony of receiving visitors is violently changed. A moment that is meant to be inviting to outsiders would become very formal and rigid without the ease of the Lady of the house making the visitor feel personally welcomed into the space. In handing over power and giving the Lady your trust, a visitor is awarded a sense of personal invitation in which they can feel safe despite their lack of control.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This passage describes the act of making tea as an occupation for women. One that allows her to \u201creign omnipotent\u201d amongst the visitors in her home (Braddon, 222). With this power, the act of making tea also provides for a darker undertone: \u201cThe most feminine and most domestic of all occupations imparts a magic harmony &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2018\/09\/19\/witchery-and-tea-a-ladys-weapon\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Witchery and Tea: A Lady&#8217;s Weapon<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3879,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3879"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}