MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

Pentru ce am venit pe lume, mama, de ce ma aflu aici? Pentru a obtine o diploma? Ca sa-mi gasesc o sotie si sa fac copii? Sa devin avocat si sa intretin familia pe care mi-o voi intemeia? Nu-mi e de ajuns, mama, sufletul meu cauta ceva maret!

Fotografia de familie atarnata pe perete e ingalbenita. Doar adanc inauntrul ei, fara sa stie nici macar ea, s-au pastrat oglinzi de-o limpezime profunda, in care totul traieste in afara timpului si a spatiului.

[…] I could tell you stories about people—but you wouldn't care to hear them. Just take things with a laugh—we all have to. Life's as you take it: all gloom or moderately shiny.

“You are conscious of no difference?' she said.

'Months have lapsed. We are different because we are older. But you speak as if you were conscious of some greater change.'

'Yes, you are changed noticeably. I thought I knew you; perhaps I did. Now I should have to learn you all over again. It is difficult, you see, for me to keep pace with you. Your opportunities are so much wider.”

‘Why do you encourage that fear of your life coming to an end?'

'It's more a hope than a fear—at most times. I can see nothing before me. I don't wish to live.'

'That's morbid. It isn't yourself that speaks, but your trouble. You are young and strong, and in a year's time very much of this unhappiness will have passed.'

'I have felt it like a certainty—as if it had been foretold to me—ever since I knew—

S-au despartit pentru un motiv neinsemnat, aproape inventat: nu voiau sa moara din dragoste. Implinirea este unul din adevarurile aflate. Insa despartirea necesara a fost pentru ea o ablatiune, asa cum li se intampla unor unele femei carora le sunt extirpate uterul si ovarele. Goala pe dinlauntru.

Stiu ca abia peste cateva zile voi reusi sa-mi reiau in sfarsit pe deplin propria viata. Ca, cine stie, poate ca niciodata nu am fost eu insami, poate doar cand m-am nascut, iar restul nu au fost decat intrupari. Ba nu: sunt un om. Si cand fantoma mea pune stapanire pe mine— atunci se produce o intalnire cu atata bucurie, o sarbatoare atat de mare, incat se poate spune ca plangem una pe umarul celeilalte.

She herself was no longer one of the ’odd women'; fortune had—or seemed to have—been kind to her; none the less her sense of a mission remained. No longer an example of perfect female independence, and unable therefore to use the same language as before, she might illustrate woman's claim of equality in marriage.—If her experience proved no obstacle.

‘But you have spoilt my life,you know.Such a grand life it might have been.Why did you come and interfere with me?And you have been so terribly obstinate.'

'Of course; that's my nature.But after all I have been weak.

'Yielding in one point that didn't matter to you at all? It was the only way of making sure that you loved me.

Barfoot laughed slightingly.
'And what if I needed the other proof that you loved me.

‘It is six o'clock,' said Everard, after a short silence. 'You remember your arrangement. At eight, down on the shore.'

'I should be much more comfortable in the armchair with a book.'

'Oh, you have had enough of books. It's time to live.'

'It's time to rest.'

'Are you so very tired? Poor girl! The day has been rather too much for you.’

We are unsuited to each other. We do not understand each other. Our marriage is physical and nothing more. My love—what is my love? I do not love her mind, her intellectual part. If I did, this frightful jealousy from which I suffer would be impossible. My ideal of the wife perfectly suited to me is far liker that girl at the public-house bar than Monica.

Woman—so said the books—are adepts at dissimulation. Was it conceivable that Monica had taken advantage of the liberty he had of late allowed her? If a woman could not endure a direct, searching gaze, must it not imply some enormous wickedness?—seeing that nature has armed them for this very trial.

You don't love me,he continued in harsh,choking tones.You wish to be my friend. That's how you try to compensate me for the loss of your love.

He laughed with bitterness.

When you say that,do you ever ask yourself whether you try to make me love you? Scenes like this are ruining my health.I have come to dread your talk.I have almost forgotten the sound of your voice when it isn't either angry or complaining

‘You see,' he went on, 'I expected nothing, and happy for me that it was so. Miss Nunn was in her severest mood; I think she didn't smile once through the evening. I will confess to you I wrote her a letter whilst I was abroad, and it offended her, I suppose.

'I don't think you can always judge of her thoughts by her face.

‘Life will be a burden to me before long if I don't have more freedom.’

'Freedom?'

'Yes, I don't think there's any harm in saying that.'

‘Freedom?' He glared at her. 'I shall begin to think that you wish you had never married me.'

'I should only wish that if I were made to feel that you shut me up in a house and couldn't trust me to go where I chose.

But you are mistaken. Miss Barfoot and Miss Nunn are all for work. They take life as seriously as you do.

Work? What kind of work? They want to make women unwomanly, to make them unfit for the only duties women ought to perform. You know very well my opinions about that kind of thing.

I don't think, Edmund, there's much real difference between men and women.That is, there wouldn't be, if women had fair treatment.

Could it be that this man reciprocated,& more than reciprocated, her complex feeling?To-day only accident had prevented him from making an avowal of love—unless she strangely mistook him. All the evening she had dwelt on this thought; it grew more and more astonishing. Was he worse than she had imagined?Under cover of independent thought,of serious moral theories, did he conceal mere profligacy and heartlessness?

Miss Barfoot smiled sadly.

'How young you are! Oh, there is far more than ten years between our ages, Rhoda! In spirit you are a young girl, and I an old woman. No, no; we will not quarrel. Your companionship is far too precious to me, and I dare to think that mine is not without value for you. Wait till my grief has had its course; then I shall be more reasonable and do you more justice.

One does not break the heart of such a woman. Heartbreak is a very old-fashioned disorder, associated with poverty of brain. If Rhoda were what he thought her, she enjoyed this opportunity of studying a modern male,and cared not how far he proceeded in his own investigations, sure that at any moment she could bid him fall back. And if for him it became earnest, why what did he seek but strong experiences?

He had seen a photograph of Miss Wheatley, but it dated from seventeen years ago. Standing in her presence, he was moved with compassion, and with another feeling more rarely excited in him by a women's face, that of reverential tenderness. Impossible to recognize in this countenance the features known to him from the portrait.

‘Will you cease coming to look for me when I don't know of it?'

'I promise you. I will never come again. And you will meet me a little oftener?'

'I will see you once every week. But I must still be perfectly free.'

'Perfectly! I will only try to win you as any man may who loves a woman.’

Take the case of Winifred Haven. She is a good-looking and charming girl, and some one or other will want to marry her some day, no doubt.

Forgive my interrupting you. There is great doubt. She has no money but what she can earn, and such girls, unless they are exceptionally beautiful, are very likely indeed to remain unsought.

Granted. But let us suppose she has an offer. Should you fear for her prudence?

We differ a good deal, Rhoda, on certain points which as a rule would never come up to interfere with our working in harmony. You have come to dislike the very thought of marriage—and everything of that kind. I think it's a danger you ought to have avoided. True, we wish to prevent girls from marrying just for the sake of being supported, and from degrading themselves as poor Bella Royston has done;

She held the conviction that whatever man could do,woman could do equally well—those tasks only excepted which demand great physical strength.At her instance,& with help from her purse,2 girls were preparing themselves to be pharmaceutical chemists;2 others had been aided by her to open a bookseller's shop;& several who had clerkships in view received an admirable training' at her school in Great Portland Street.

Do you feel that I am no longer quite a stranger to you, Miss Madden?

Yes—you have told me so much.

It's very kind of you to listen so patiently. I wish I had more interesting things to tell, but you see what a dull life mine has been. When I dared to speak to you last Sunday I had only the faintest hope that you would grant me your acquaintance. You can't, I am sure, repent of having done me that kindness—?

‘So it is your birthday? I no longer keep count of mine, and couldn't tell you without a calculation what I am exactly. It doesn't matter, you see. Thirty-one or fifty-one is much the same for a woman who has made up her mind to live alone and work steadily for a definite object. But you are still a young girl, Monica. My best wishes!'

“I should never have known you,' said Rhoda, equally surprised. 'For one thing, you look like a fever patient just recovering. What can be expected? Your sister gave me a shocking account of how you live.'

'The work is very hard.'

'Preposterous. Why do you stay at such a place, Monica?'

'I am getting experience.'

'To be used in the next world?'

They laughed.”

‘I should be sorry if I never saw you again.'
These words he uttered with embarrassment, his eyes on the ground. Monica could only keep silence. Half an hour ago she would not have thought it possible for any remark of this man's seriously to occupy her mind, yet now she waited for the next sentence in discomposure which was quite free from resentment.

She thought of her sisters. Their loneliness was for life, poor things. Already they were old; and they would grow older, sadder, perpetually struggling to supplement that dividend from the precious capital—and merely that they might keep alive. Oh!—her heart ached at the misery of such a prospect. How much better if the poor girls had never been born.

Monica's face was of a recognized type of prettiness; a pure oval; from the smooth forehead to the dimpled little chin all its lines were soft and graceful. Her lack of colour, by heightening the effect of black eyebrows and darkly lustrous eyes, gave her at present a more spiritual cast than her character justified;