FANciness

lkranieri

lkranieri

VFG Member
All this week I am visiting one of our local elementary schools to talk about small aspects of Victorian life. The art teacher is doing related projects with each grade and on Wednesday I am supposed to talk to the kindergartners about the history of fans. I have a small assortment of fans--feathered, advertising, cockade, pleated, handpainted Italian, etc., but know little about the history of them.

Today (we were talking about children's clothing) the teacher gave me a sheet with the Language of Fans and the incredible subtleties in fan "language" made me immediately suspicious as to whether it is all true. Could things such as this really be true:

--Drawing the fan across the forehead: "You have changed"

--A closed fan touching the right eye: "When may I be allowed to see you?"

--Hitting her hand's palm: "Love me"

REALLY?

Anything important I should be sure to tell these little ones about fans?
 
Those Victorians got up to all kinds of stuff they didn't want us to know about! It really doesn't surprise me that there would be a secret language of fans (like flowers and colors and gem stones and... ).

A quick Google search turned this up from the Alabama state archives: http://www.archives.state.al.us/activity/language_of_fans.pdf

So it was the Victorian way of changing their Facebook relationship status? :) There really is nothing new under the sun!
 
Thank you <u>very</u> much for that great link. I assume from the way the PDF is constructed (four identical blocks of text; "Use this list to send messages...") that it is intended to be used with children, so I am going to give one to each of the children. Even though they may be non-reading kindergartners, they can take the paper home with their fan and have someone older do it with them.

I also went digging even deeper and found this 1895 newspaper article about the language of fans, so I guess there was some early awareness of that strange communication, but most of the references to that attribute them to use among Spanish women. I love the "...if it is allowed to fall negligently downward, it is meant to express "I never cared for you, and I never shall care." OUCH.
 
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