Misers

[poliphilo]

Whatever happened to the misers?

Back in the 18th and 19th centuries people loved their misers. There was a whole literature about them. They were mean, they stank, they hid guineas in dung-heaps, they made pies out of long dead sheep. Mr Boffin in Our Mutual Friend is an avid collector and consumer of miser-porn. Daniel Dancer, John Elwes, Vulture Hopkins- these guys were famous.

There were famous fictional misers too- Scrooge, Silas Marner, Uncle Ebenezer Balfour.

But then along came the 20th century and misers- both real and fictional- dropped out of sight.

So why don't we have them any more?

Comments

miser mike

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

I was a total miser in my first year out here in Japan. I used to skip breakfast and lunch, and not eat a thing until about 11pm (we`re talking all day nothing but water here) when i would have a massive meal for about 500 yen ($5) at home.

I went out to eat maybe once a week, and one movie too, with Yuka, and we ALWAYS went Dutch. I hardly ever drank, and I never had desserts or snacked. I NEVER turned the air conditioner in my apartment on. In fact it was broken, and I was quite happy about that, because it meant I would never use it. Instead I lined my windows with cardboard boxes (seriously!) to insulate them in the winter, and huddled under like 5 blankets (from school- I wouldn`t buy them!) whenever I was at home. In the summer, I slept with all windows open.

We took one holiday all year, and it was this fantastically cheap 5 day package deal to Saipan, the poor man`s Guam. It was great still.

I never bought new clothes. Buying a winter jacket for me almost had both me and Yuka in tears cos she thought I needed one and I thought I`d rather just be cold.

I never bought a bicycle and walked whenever I could to skip the few hundred yen a train might cost me.

I never bought a computer or a heater or CD`s or DVD`s or a TV or a DVD player or an i-pod or a plate or a pan or anything at all...

I was a total miser. And. It felt really good ;)

Re: miser mike

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I get spasms of miserliness.

I panic about our finances and decide I'm never, not ever, going to spend any more money.

I think miserliness is triggered by insecurity. That would fit with your situation that first year in Japan.

Re: miser mike

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

I don't know y'know- to me it feels more like getting down to the roots of what I NEED as opposed to what I WANT. Not indulging whims. Getting away from that whole- eating so many chocolates you make yourself sick- thing. Because if you don't do that, and you go without for a while, then like Charlie, you appreciate the chocolate all that much more when you get it.

If I eat 3 meals a day, I never really (not REALLY) get hungry, and I never REALLY get full. I'm eating 3 meals a day not because I WANT to but because people say you should. And you can't get full (to bursting) 3 times a day, without getting enormously fat. So I eat 1 massive meal a day, for which I have to wait the whole day, get enormously full, and it sees me through til afternoon/evening the next day.

Miserliness is more like that for me than like insecurity, I think.

Re: miser mike

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But eating one huge meal a day isn't true miserliness. The true miser (the Dickensian miser) never ever eats a huge meal. He subsists on crusts and water and pies made out of rancid sheep.

And the money he saves gets squirreled away in dungheaps, under floorboards and up chimneys.

Re: miser mike

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

then i shan't claim to be dickensian. perhaps i'm not even a real miser. i never deny myself something i need- like- not having enough food. i just like to delay gratification on stuff like that.

money i save- that goes in the bank. i don't have a dungheap! your scroogian miser seems like he trusts nobody at all. well, you know what they say. miserliness is next to miserableness!