"Through his long experience of sorrow and loss Martin has learned how to give the one all-important thing that is necessary to a woman's happiness. Have you the slightest idea what it is? You will smile at the sentiment of women, and say 'Love, of course,' but it isn't love, at least it is not necessarily included in that term. Many a man honestly loves his wife, and yet succeeds in making her miserable. No! It is just a simple, homely quality without which the grandest of passions is incomplete! Tenderness! Tenderness means kindness and understanding and sympathy, and imagination, and patience--above all, patience! When a man is in love he thinks a woman perfect, but she isn't, she is an irrational creature, inconsequent creature, whose mate will have need of patience every day of his life, and sometimes many times a day. Of course there do exist paragons, calm, correct creatures, with smooth hair and chiseled features, who are always serene and self-contained, but then they are also independent of tenderness. This grows complicated! I'd better drop pretense and confess at once that when I talk generalities I really mean You and Me, the two people who are at the back of all generalities!"
Letter from Katrine Beverley to Jim Blair in An Unknown Lover, by Jessie de Horne Vaizey, 1913
P.S. Don't get tripped up by the "irrational...inconsequent" bit. Please just allow this articulate fictional character to speak without foisting 21st century judgmentalism on her. Annoyed judgmentalism just closes up and messes with your mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment