Serena Misbehaves

Jan 14^th. Tuesday 14^th

Having sit up so late the evening previous, I was not able to attend school this morning. However I went this afternoon recited tolerably well and returned home. In the evening in order to pass away time I broke a lamp and after listening to a scolding stuck it the vase on the mantle piece for show. I am very much fatigued from my last night dissipation and should like to retire early. Expect father will be at home this evening and how glad we will all be. I have studied most of my lessons and now about to commence my journal for this week’s composition after which I think I shall retire.

In these days before electricity, light is provided by whale or lard oil lamps, or by candles. Lard oil is a plentiful by-product of the pork industry. Serena’s family may be fortunate enough to be one of the 1,400 private customers in Cincinnati to also have gas lamps (Green, and Bennett 37). Sometimes Serena seems to be thoughtless, awkward or clumsy. Breaking a lamp is no small infraction, but Serena does not seem to take the event seriously.

In future years, the word “dissipation” will bring to mind a life of alcoholism, sex, and drug addiction. It seems to have a more innocent meaning in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Anne of Green Gables, Anne describes her well-chaperoned trip to the city, saying “The ice cream was delicious, Marilla, and it was so lovely and dissipated to be sitting there and eating it at eleven o’clock at night.”