He Could See Plainly That She Was

I'm Going To Pull Myself Together For A While And Think-try To Determine What Character Of A Woman I Am; For, Candidly, I Don't Know. By All The Codes Which I Am Acquainted With, I Am A Devilishly Wicked Specimen Of The Sex. But Some Way I Can't Convince Myself That I Am. I Must Think About It.

I Dance With People I Despise; Amuse Myself With Men Whose Only Talent Lies In Their Feet, Gain The Disapprobation Of People I Honor And Respect; Return Home At Day Break With My Brain In A State Which Was Never Intended For It; And Arise In The Middle Of The Next Day Feeling Infinitely More, In Spirit And Flesh Like A Liliputian, Than A Woman With Body And Soul. Entry (when She Was Eighteen) In Her Commonplace Book, 1868-1869.

…there Would Be No Powerful Will Binding Hers In That Blind Persistence With Which Men And Women Believe They Have A Right To Impose A Private Will Upon A Fellow Creature…and Yet She Had Loved Him- Sometimes. Often She Had Not. What Did It Matter! What Could Love, The Unsolved Mystery, Count For In The Face Of This Possession Of Self-assertion Which She Suddenly Recognized As The Strongest Impulse Of Her Being.

The City Atmosphere Certainly Has Improved Her. Some Way She Doesn't Seem Like The Same Woman.

But The Beginning Of Things, Of A World Especially, Is Necessarily Vague, Tangled, Chaotic, And Exceedingly Disturbing. How Few Of Us Ever Emerge From Such Beginning! How Many Souls Perish In Its Tumult!