Sublime

Bacharach bride:

I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.

Her companion’s discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch, to nothing more than a short decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as long as she could, with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its o

“Of course. So is Julie. Most of the Proctor women went to Miss Lyon’s seminary—or Mount Holyoke if you prefer,” Aunt Gwyneth replied. “They say Mary Lyon got her idea for a women’s college when she was here, serving as the assistant principal of the Ipswich Female Seminary.”

obdurate.

realized that my mum and dad had met at university, had both obtained degrees, and yet my mum had not had a job since she married my dad.

We’re not with her in the present as she’s falling in love, we’re with her as she goes back into her memories, with all the grief and longing and distance that comes with the passage of time.