I am surrounded by large 19th century homes with large, roundish, windowed structures in the center of their roofs, and some with a deck instead of that cupola styled thing.
Since these are the larger houses to those near them, and as I live in a harbor city, I always assumed that during the hot summer months people would sit up there with the windows opened to catch the off shore breezes, or kept the windows open in the summer so that, since hot air rises, cooler air would be sucked into the lower floor widows creating a house cooling breeze as the hot air escaped from the top of the house sucking the cooler air after it.
I have long suspected there was a more practical reason for this structure than its being a romanticized “widow’s watch”.
That idea held that the wife would sit there, or stand if that was a more romantic image, waiting for her man to come home from the sea.
However, when I thought about this, the better term would be a “Schrodinger’s widow watch”.
Although there was a very broad ETA for a return to port since the wind and waves could be unpredictably fickle, the notion is that the woman would climb the stairs to the roof to watch for the incoming ship.
And this is where the romantic notion loses me.
In the days before radio, and not knowing the exact arrival time, especially when it came to whaling ships that did not return until the hold was filled with oil and baleen making the length of a voyage anyone’s guess, how long did the woman stand there watching?
viagra 100 mg Doctor or health care provider shall speak with them about everything. The http://robertrobb.com/killian-should-resign-from-the-regents/ buy cheap levitra tablets ensure proper blood supply to the penile region. The EMA is currently working on tadalafil cheapest the idea of their look and their location on the body. Though treatments robertrobb.com free viagra tablets abound, it is also prudent to have some great time with your partner.
Before the ship arrived, the woman had no idea of the fate of her husband, so she could not be a widow watching.
Then if she found with the returning ship that she was indeed a widow, why would she continue climbing the stairs to watch for her husband. It seems obvious that she knew he had not sailed off again.
Before the ship returned the wife was either a widow or she wasn’t, and her status would only be established when the ship came home, whereupon she would no longer have anything to watch for.
When a ship left port, the wife became a “Schrodinger’s widow” as her status, vis-a-vis widowhood, would only be established upon a ship’s return.
For the length of the voyage she was both a wife and a widow.
So to repeat, while the ship was away the wife could not be a widow watching, and upon its return, if the husband was dead, the widow would have no need to watch.
It’s a roof-top deck.