'All the female characters,' she wrote, 'in all their thoughts and lives, are full of one thing, or are regarded in the light of that one thought, love! It begins with the child of six years old, of the opening (a charming picture), and closes with it at the last page. And so dominant is this idea, so incessant is the writer's tendency to describe _the need of being loved_, that the heroine, who tells her own story, leaves the reader at last under the uncomfortable impression of her having either entertained a double love, or allowed one to supersede another, without notification of the transition. It is not thus in real life. There are substantial, heartfelt interests for women of all ages, and, under ordinary circumstances, quite apart from love; there is an absence of introspection, an unconsciousness, a repose, in women's lives, unless under peculiarly unfortunate circumstances, of which we find no admission in this book; and to the absence of it may be attributed some of the criticism which the book will meet with from readers who are no prudes, but whose reason and taste will regret the assumption that events and characters are to be regarded through the medium of one passion only.' The critical blunder in this judgment is that here the authoress of the _Illustrations in Political Economy_ and of the _Atkinson Letters_ sees the authoress of _Villette_ through her own temperament, as an intellectual like herself:--a humane sociologist, and a philosophical freethinker, _whose literary purpose is to use her talent as a writer in the service of her ideas and principles_. Judging _Villette_ and its authoress from this point of view and by these standards, Harriet Martineau decides that _because_ 'all events and characters in _Villette are_ regarded through the medium of one passion, love,' _therefore_ the literary motive and purpose of the authoress must have been to deny--or at any rate to ignore--that '_there are substantial heartfelt interests for women of all ages, and in ordinary circumstances, quite apart from love._'