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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Evie Dunmore
Read between
June 28 - June 29, 2023
“I read an essay by John Dewey a little while ago. He argues that art is art only when it succeeds at creating a shared human experience—a communication, if you will—between the work and the audience. If it doesn’t, it’s just an object.”
“Your personal good fortune has protected you from the consequences of the law thus far. Engaging with politics was a choice for you. For those who live with the consequences of injustice every day, political activism is not a choice. So I reckon the shock you feel now is your ignorance shattering—think of it as growing pains.”
“Mes condoléances, monsieur—les rousses viennent de l’enfer.”
Now she knew why girls were not allowed to feel anger—there was a reckless hope in it, and power. She would not loathe the compliant woman she had been this morning, oh no; she would direct this precious anger outward, and her gaze forward. Les rousses viennent de l’enfer—redheaded women are from hell. Lovely was dead. Enter the witch.
He knew he wasn’t lovable, not since he’d been a boy, anyway, and he had only known it then when Sorcha had put her sticky little hand upon his cheek and told him she loved him, so he had no expectations in that regard. But hatred?
The challenge was always the eyes, and in this case they held a very complex little soul. . . . When Hattie finally glanced up, she found several elderly women had joined the circle and were craning their necks.
“Much that I despise,” he said hoarsely, “and all that I desire, meets in you. And it frustrates me beyond reason.”
She was sweet. Genuinely sweet and unassuming. Spoiled and ignorant, too, but her cheerful disposition was rooted in something deeper; there’d be some whimsy in her even had she been raised in a beggar’s hovel. It
“Charity? No. I want lasting change. Remember the trouble of raising wages to a living wage as a single entrepreneur? I want a restructuring of government expenditure. A systemic redistribution of wealth—that is what I want.”
“Injustice is injustice,” she replied. “It occurs to me that it might be inconsistent to acknowledge merely the injustices that suit.”
“You’ll find no greater brotherhood than in a mining community. They’d share their last shirt with you and their last penny when hardship strikes, ’cause no one outside gives a damn. But try stepping out of line. Try eating your porridge differently, wearing your cap differently; think of extracting the coal differently, and your own people will knock you about and mock you, afraid you’re better than them, that you have ideas above your station. Then the upper classes won’t have you because you eat and dress and think differently, and because you have ideas above your station.” He flicked his
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Rosie Fraser contemplated her with an unreadable expression. “Why?” At least she didn’t flat out ask, What’s in it for you? Hattie replied the one thing that came to mind. “Because I can.”
feel more acutely than ever an obligation to put whatever talents and good fortune I might possess to the best possible use. I’m not sure yet what best means, but I shall accompany Mr. Blackstone to St. Andrews tomorrow in search of a camera. . . .
“Oh, how frustrating,” she said, “to keep a woman’s wages low to soothe a man’s vanity.” “It’s not just vanity,” he murmured. “Cruelty, then.” “For some it’s that. Mostly, though, it’s pride—” “Pride!” she cried. “What is there to be proud about?” “Very well, a fragility, then, masking as pride,” he said grimly. “The sort you have when you have little else.”
Money might be tight all the time. He needs her to work to make ends meet. Makes some men angry, that. And the wife, she knows every fellow with a tall hat and a cravat can grind her husband into the dust with his posh heel if he wants, yet here she’s to submit to her husband’s authority. It’s never said, but you know, deep down. It can cause bad blood.”
She looked up, vaguely confused, as though he had pulled her from the depths of some meandering thoughts. “Those?” she said. “So that they wouldn’t feel left out.” His brows pulled together. “They are . . . stones.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “Yes, but I don’t think anyone ever picks them.”
Whatever his motivation, he had shown great foresight in anticipating her desires.
He studied her for a moment, then he released her with faint reluctance. “You do that, then.”
As she freshened up in the side chamber, she wondered which of her hair combs would most delight a bride; she couldn’t decide between the silver one with jade stones and the rose gold with amethysts. The obvious solution was to simply gift them both, but once Lucian found out—and he would—he would harp about her ignorant ways again.
She gave Matthews a nod. But no smile. She had given thought to her smile lately, because she had consciously withheld it from her (then) undeserving husband, and it had occurred to her that she smiled more often to preempt someone else’s displeasure than to express her joy. Any remotely self-determined woman should claim control over the curve of her own mouth.
They made an uneasy picture, his old life and the new one in the same frame, but for a moment there she had danced on the edges of both worlds as though one could do just that: belong neither fully here nor there but right in between.
Perhaps she did. Perhaps she did like a bit of rough, as he put it, though she would have called it dark, determined, and a little dangerous. Someone bold and carnal enough to not drown in her desire for more but to match and master and pamper it.
The quiet intensity of his gaze turned her limbs as weak as water. He had looked at her like this once before, during their wedding night when he had ordered her to put her hands on his shoulders. “I can do that,” he said. “Take you without asking, without stopping. Have you submit to indecencies. Do you want me to?”
think it is about the desire . . .” she stammered. “I want to feel madly desired and not be blamed for my indulgence.”
could take you from behind,” he murmured. “I could hold you, just so.” His hand closed around her throat, lightly, but the suggestion made everything go still inside her head. “You wouldn’t see my face,” came his dark voice. “You could imagine some Viking in my place.”
“No bashful thoughts?” Thoughts? Her mind was quiet. She was glowing and alive. She smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “So, I cannot think of a division of labor or owning the means of production as the root of evil.” “But some people paint,” she said, “and others are stuck in a tunnel.”
“Some of it,” he said. “Agreed with his criticisms, disagreed with his premises. But even he’d say there’s room between a hypocrite and living in a barrel—what was his name, the philosopher’s name, who did this?”
She felt his hand on her hip, heavy and warm, and her body softened in response. How fortunate, to have a husband who knew how to settle her.
It reminds me of a letter from one of our American sisters, who realized this after reading a speech by a Black American suffragist called Sojourner Truth—Mrs. Truth, rightly, pointed out that some of the same men who insisted on carrying some women over ditches would not do the same for her because of the color of her skin—to which she purportedly said, “and ain’t I a woman?”
“Unless you are a woman,” she said bitterly. “Then you are taught that spending your every breath on others is working for your own glory. A rather sly appropriation of surplus labor if you ask me.” He nearly choked on his sandwich. “You receive two thousand a year. In addition to all essential expenses paid. That’s one hell of a wage.”
It seems that labor, once it crosses the door into a home, is magically transformed into a priceless act of love or female duty—meanwhile, women’s hands are raw from very real chores.”
“Better,” she muttered. She tried again, angrier. The pony danced on the spot. Her next shout sent a raven fluttering up from a nearby boulder. And then the mechanisms that kept a woman quiet must have broken inside her, for she screamed—drawn out, angry, raw, and loud—pouring all she had to give into her voice, as if she were the last person left on earth.
His chest tightened as if in the grip of a vise. He hated disappointing her, but he couldn’t change that, so he hated how she carried on with this righteous, breathless fury. He did not comprehend her motivations, so she seemed erratic to him, and as such he did not feel safe with her. He killed them, he wanted to say, if only he could make himself say such words out loud, but then she already knew that Rutland meant death. Yet here she was, carrying on. If he were to try to tell her of his shame, and his pain, and she still insisted he be her pious version of good, he might not find it in him
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This doesnt quite make sense becsuse he tells her everything
remarkably tall form, next to the duke. Lucian had joined them, and Hattie would have loved to be a fly on the wall next to the unlikely trio—the men’s icy, smug, and brooding temperaments, respectively, had to make for terrible company.
