Extant photos of functional American outhouses from the early 20th century often have no door cutout at all, with vents cut into the side in unadorned shapes. In Europe, many outhouses will have a heart cutout on the door. Commonly seen are the moon and star together. The purpose of a common language is a shared understanding of what words mean, indeed language is in a constant flux,I have a year old English dictionary,some wonderful words in there all archaic now,I feel that we are poorer for that.
I would love to see a dictionary from that time! So much difference between British English and American English, would be interesting. My comments are too lengthy to put in the form of a comment but I direct you to my website: outhouseamericana. Thank you. The imagery would be right to have a crescent moon on the door.
Humorist Chic Sale wrote a famous essay about a carpenter who built outhouses. It was called The Specialist, and it was published in A lot of people like stars, because they throw a ragged shadder. Language and culture evolve. Symbols are a primal form of language. In modern times we use the restroom. In older times we rested at night. The moon indicating night ,a room to rest in. Bathroom being a place to bath and rest. Think about the evolution of outhouse to watercloset.
Language and words are the purest form of Magick. We make bowel movements in a toilet bowl. Symbols are devices of universal language, even in the subconscious mind. Son being male as a homonym of sun the symbol would speak to the gender difference. The door, as faced from the outside, had its hinges left, and no knob or pull. Rather, it had a cutout, shaped roughly like a boomerang, with the concavity of the shape opening towards the right, so that one could slip one's fingers in to grasp it.
It permitted light, ventilation and easy opening. I suggest that this simple expedient came to have some traditional force, and once hardware became available, was still felt to be useful or attractive, and was displaced to the center of the door, to break up the flat plane.
The process of displacement may be better understood in light of this familiar story accounting for another kind of post-functional, atavistic retention of practices once pointed and practical; the yarn is regularly used in linguistics and anthropology courses:.
After Uncle Herschel married Aunt Martha he noticed that whenever she cooked a roast she would prepare it by cutting off the end. He asked her why she did that. When the roast was served Uncle Herschel noticed that the end had been cut off before it was cooked.
Uncle Herschel asked Aunt Martha's mother why she did that. Uncle Herschel was in the kitchen and noticed the grandmother cutting the end off a roast. Uncle Herschel asked why she did that. She replied, "When I first got married, we went out and bought utensils to set up housekeeping.
I got a roast pan that was too small. So I've always had to cut the end off the roast to get it to fit in my pan. The crescent moon does seem to dominate in those cases where there is a cutout, but statistically, one would expect at least a few pairs of his'n'hers facilties , with a star for the male, to survive. What's lacking, and very much needed, is even the smallest bit of evidence that lunar and solar imagery were particularly gendered, or understood to be so.
A clear literary reference would be useful, as would a photograph of paired outhouses with solar and lunar markings, prior to to choose an arbitrary date earlier than the development of the icon or even The moon-icon itself is not yet evidenced in photographs of that period, or shown by written documentation to have been dominant.
The simplest explanation is that the cutout was one of several simple icons used for ornament: ornamentation of the necessary is a means of assuring oneself that things have gone beyond the level of mere necessity and subsistence. In Germany , a heart-shaped cutout is more traditional -- the usage is clearly visual euphemism, i. In this Polish example , the heart-tradition seems to have opened an associative pathway to another series, based on playing-cards; in one of unspecified provenance , a diamond appears.
Your email has been sent! This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using this website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Supposedly before the adoption of the more familiar male and female bathroom symbols, it was common to use a crescent moon to denote that an outhouse was for women and a sun to denote that it was an outhouse for men. This supposedly being a nod to the fact that women have long being associated with the moon and men supposedly with the sun.
Newest 5 Comments Ah! There's a real resemblance to the quoted part above. Abusive comment hidden. Show it anyway. This is an excerpt from my own article printed in Ripperologist Magazine in
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