“I can see now,” she said, “that all his pedagogy was an experiment.” The books and instruction had been his attempt to make her into something like a learned whiteman, like himself. After he left for Leiden the instruction continued in the form of boxes of books, papers, long letters of advice and orders, but she gradually understood that she herself was not wanted—she was nothing to Outger but a subject on which to practice his ideas of intellectual development. She had failed in some way to become an Enlightened Savage, and so remained alone in the house on Penobscot Bay. When the solitude
...more
