We know next to nothing of Christiana till after she is a widow indeed.
The names of her parents, and what kind of parents they were, the schools
and the boarding-schools to which they sent their daughter, her school
companions, the books she read, if she ever read any books at all, the
amusements she was indulged in and indulged herself in--on all that her
otherwise full and minute biographer is wholly silent. He does not go
back beyond her married life; he does not even go back to the beginning
of that. The only thing we are sure of about Christiana's early days is
that she was an utterly ungodly woman and that she married an utterly
ungodly man. "Have you a family? Are you a married man?" asked Charity
of Christian in the House Beautiful. "I have a wife and four small
children," he replied. "And why did you not bring them along with you?"
Then Christian wept, and said: "Oh, how willingly would I have done it;
but they were all utterly averse to my going on pilgrimage." "But you
should have talked to them," said Charity, "and have endeavoured to have
shown them the danger of being behind." "So I did," answered Christian.
"And did you pray to God that He would bless your counsel to them?" "Yes,
and with much affection; for you must think that my wife and poor
children were very dear unto me." "But what could they say for
themselves why they came not?" "Why, my wife was afraid of losing the
world, and my children were given over to the foolish delights of youth;
so what with one thing and what with another, they left me to wander in
this manner alone."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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