The base, transactional nature of it all! Was this what daughters were for? Even the girls themselves seemed only too aware of the conditional basis of their appearance at table, as if they had always known they owed men their beauty and now the time had come to pay that debt in full. The mutuality Mrs Touchet had always believed possible, an idealized table, around which men and women met as equals, employing only their wits – this was revealed to be a hopelessly naive vision. Beauty trumped all other considerations.
