Portrait of a Scotsman (A League of Extraordinary Women, #3)

by Evie Dunmore

a woman must not go shopping or to a gallery by herself. It was too dangerous, they said, for her reputation, her virtue. But who did the endangering? Men.

“thirty percent of central public spending for infernal imperial wars. On the other hand, nothing for health or education, not a shilling. Which very nicely maintains the oversupply of poor, uneducated lads to the front lines and mining pits. There’s more dignity in bullets and rocks than in begging for alms in a rotten London ally.”

Odd, how the truth pounced into plain view after being there all along. She wasn’t lovely. That’s why she had such a strong reaction to the word; there was nothing wrong with lovely, but it was not her. Beneath lace and silk, she was a wild and dangerous creature.

It’s dreadful having to live under someone’s eye, being steered toward the same things everyone should like and do. It feels like a constant pruning of my self.

“It is a small consolation for Nancy Jones, in Whitechapel, who is kicked and beaten at discretion by her husband, to know that Lady Jones, in Belgravia, is always assisted in and out of her carriage as if she were a cripple.”