that since any work that I could do would be null and useless for others as well as for myself, since it would not lead to anything, that I let myself be lazy, that I try to prolong my sleep in order to escape life? This laziness that you seem to reproach me for is really a means of discharging an excess of energy that has no outlet. If you believe that this laziness prevents me from doing anything, you are mistaken. I would quickly find courage and ardour again if I had some mission to fulfill or if some goal were proposed to me. But that is not the case. I donât have any calling, nor could I have one. That has been the most ardent of my wishes and no one will let me do it. I donât understand the reasons, and Iâm not accusing anyone if I donât have a calling. I hope that one gives me the same benefit of a doubt, because it is not my fault. As for the sadness that I am accused of, one should not be astonished by it. This awkward position in which I find myself, my memories, my fears, my anxieties, often the delicacy of my health, are enough cause for it. . . . Would one be just if one reproached you for the annoyed and said air that you often have?
EDS. E.O. HELLERSTEIN, L.P. HUME AND K.M. OFFEN, VICTORIAN WOMEN (1981)
âHOW A WOMAN CARES FOR A MANâ
Geraldine Jewsbury (1812â80) published six novels and contributed to Westminster Review and Household Words. She spent many years housekeeping for her father and brother. Fortunately she met Jane Carlyle, who found a publisher for her first novel Zoë (1845). These two women had a great deal in common and when not in London both wrote lively, thoughtful, long letters. They express warmth, intelligent reflection on life and skill with words that deserve a wider audience. Here Jewsbury comments on the different attitudes men and women bring to relationships.
15 June 1841
Dearest Jane,
There is a great deal I want to say to you, but when I begin it seems difficult, almost impossible, to put it down as it really is . . . How much I wish you would give me some of your own philosophy! One day, whilst at Seaforth, a youth I have known a long time took it into his head to be very confidential, and preached his own gospel for the space of a whole afternoon! He had been thrown on the world very young to shift for himself, and a real little youth of the world he had become. He looked so young â though he is twenty-five â that one could not call him a man! The mere facts that he told me were not disguised and beautified, yet the morale that stood out clear was to the effect that men cannot afford to be very long or very much in earnest in their intercourse with women: that when a woman got thoroughly earnest and engrossed, a man who had any regard for himself or her would break off at once! That une grande passion was an embarrassing affair, and was very dangerous to people who had to get a living, and that he had always broken off as soon as he came to his senses: that women seemed to think it was the only object of interest in life, and it was a desperate thing to let them go too far. One thing specially struck me â though this was not said to me, only repeated to me â viz., that all men who have received an English education hate a woman in proportion as she commits herself for them, though a woman cares for a man exactly in the proportion in which she has made sacrifices for him, evidently thinking and showing, he thought, that all that was in the world â business and riches and success and so forth â were the only realities, and the only things worth making objects! He is neither better nor worse, but an average specimen of the generality of men. He once did me a material piece of kindness, and he was not in love with me: he had taken a fit of kindness to a friend of mine, and he raised himself in my opinion, and showed more real feeling than I had supposed in him. To be sure, the fact that my friend did not care about
EDS. E.O. HELLERSTEIN, L.P. HUME AND K.M. OFFEN, VICTORIAN WOMEN (1981)
âHOW A WOMAN CARES FOR A MANâ
Geraldine Jewsbury (1812â80) published six novels and contributed to Westminster Review and Household Words. She spent many years housekeeping for her father and brother. Fortunately she met Jane Carlyle, who found a publisher for her first novel Zoë (1845). These two women had a great deal in common and when not in London both wrote lively, thoughtful, long letters. They express warmth, intelligent reflection on life and skill with words that deserve a wider audience. Here Jewsbury comments on the different attitudes men and women bring to relationships.
15 June 1841
Dearest Jane,
There is a great deal I want to say to you, but when I begin it seems difficult, almost impossible, to put it down as it really is . . . How much I wish you would give me some of your own philosophy! One day, whilst at Seaforth, a youth I have known a long time took it into his head to be very confidential, and preached his own gospel for the space of a whole afternoon! He had been thrown on the world very young to shift for himself, and a real little youth of the world he had become. He looked so young â though he is twenty-five â that one could not call him a man! The mere facts that he told me were not disguised and beautified, yet the morale that stood out clear was to the effect that men cannot afford to be very long or very much in earnest in their intercourse with women: that when a woman got thoroughly earnest and engrossed, a man who had any regard for himself or her would break off at once! That une grande passion was an embarrassing affair, and was very dangerous to people who had to get a living, and that he had always broken off as soon as he came to his senses: that women seemed to think it was the only object of interest in life, and it was a desperate thing to let them go too far. One thing specially struck me â though this was not said to me, only repeated to me â viz., that all men who have received an English education hate a woman in proportion as she commits herself for them, though a woman cares for a man exactly in the proportion in which she has made sacrifices for him, evidently thinking and showing, he thought, that all that was in the world â business and riches and success and so forth â were the only realities, and the only things worth making objects! He is neither better nor worse, but an average specimen of the generality of men. He once did me a material piece of kindness, and he was not in love with me: he had taken a fit of kindness to a friend of mine, and he raised himself in my opinion, and showed more real feeling than I had supposed in him. To be sure, the fact that my friend did not care about
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