I was never sent to the corner or to face a wall. My late wife remembered corner time at the age of 8. She took pride in the fact that she still somehow managed to see what was on TV.
I haven't written a story for the library yet (I'm currently writing my fourth story) that doesn't include a teenage girl spending time in the corner. In mainstream fiction Dennis The Menace and Nancy are famous for spending lots of time in the corner. In the comic strip Blondie the daughter, Cookie, has been sent to the corner more than once.
In a letter found in two newspaper advice columns (yes this particular letter made it into not one but two different columns) a young man writes that he is dismayed by the fact that on several occasions when he has arrived to visit his 17 year old girlfriend at her home he has found her being punished by having to stand facing the corner, he is told by a parent, "Ruth will be able to see you in about ten minutes."
In the early 1970s The BBC ran an 8 part series called The Edwardians, at least some of the episodes (altered) ended up on Masterpiece Theatre in the U.S. In an episode dedicated to the story of Frederick Royce of Rolls/Royce fame we find that Royce and his wife are raising her teenage niece. Mrs. Royce phones Frederick at work (in the U.S. version) to tell him, in part, that the girl has been very rude. "I sent her to the corner with...(some kind of lucky something she was allowed to hold in the corner)." Mr. Royce, "She's 17 years old. I suppose you want me to come home and spank her?" Mrs. Royce, "Something needs to be done." But that's the end of that part of the conversation. We don't know if he spanked the girl when he arrived home or not. I assume this has some historical accuracy to it and wasn't just thrown in to slow down the main plot. |