Bildungsromans; Domestic fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction
Maudsley was solemn and exalted in his desire that there should be no
mistake about it. "There is a destiny made for a man by his ancestors,
and no one can elude, were he able to attempt it, the tyranny of his
organisation."
You had been wrong all the time. You had thought of your family, Papa and
Mamma, perhaps Grandpapa and Grandmamma, as powerful, but independent and
separate entities, in themselves sacred and inviolable, working against
you from the outside: either with open or secret and inscrutable
hostility, hindering, thwarting, crushing you down. But always from the
outside. You had thought of yourself as a somewhat less powerful, but
still independent and separate entity, a sacred, inviolable self,
struggling against them for completer freedom and detachment. Crushed
down, but always getting up and going on again; fighting a more and more
successful battle for your own; beating them in the end. But it was not
so. There were no independent, separate entities, no sacred, inviolable
selves. They were one immense organism and you were part of it; you were
nothing that they had not been before you. It was no good struggling. You
were caught in the net; you couldn't get out.
And so were they. Mamma and Papa were no more independent and separate
than you were. Dan had gone like Papa, but Papa had gone like Grandpapa
and Grandmamma Olivier. Nobody ever said anything about Grandpapa
Olivier; so perhaps there had been something queer about him. Anyhow,
Papa couldn't help drinking any more than Mamma could help being sweet
and gentle; they hadn't had a choice or a chance.
How senseless you had been with your old angers and resentments. Now that
you understood, you could never feel anger or resentment any more. As
long as you lived you could never feel anything but love for them and
compassion. Mamma, Papa and Aunt Charlotte, Dan and Roddy, they were
caught in the net. They couldn't get out.
Dan and Roddy--But Mark had got out. Why not you?
They were not all alike. Papa and Uncle Victor were different; and Aunt
Charlotte and Aunt Lavvy. Papa had married and handed it on; he hadn't
cared. Uncle Victor hadn't married; he had cared too much; he had been
afraid.
And Maurice Jourdain and Lindley Vickers had been afraid; everybody who
knew about Aunt Charlotte would be afraid, and if they didn't know you
would have to tell them, supposing--
You would be like Aunt Lavvy. You would live in Morfe with Mamma for years
and years as Aunt Lavvy had lived with Grandmamma. First you would be
like Dorsy Heron; then like Louisa Wright; then like Aunt Lavvy.
No; when you were forty-five you would go like Aunt Charlotte.
XII.
Anyhow, she had filled in the time between October and March when the
Sutcliffes came back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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