Blossom’s Reviews > Portrait of a Scotsman > Status Update

“At first sight, they were still an unlikely match—opposites in looks, upbringing, and temperament. But on the artist’s color wheel, two opposite colors were considered complementary. Their high contrast caused high impact, and they looked their brightest when placed next to each other.”

“Ruskin’a opinion has lost its teeth. She was no longer working for his praise. She was no longer working for praise from a nebulous audience, either. Her work her was dedicated to people she knew, and hopefully it contributed toward the changes she wished to see in Britain.”

- Hattie’s reason/purpose for her art in the British art exhibit.

“You are not my only jailer. I’m standing up against everyone who forced my hand…,a whole society that colludes and agrees that is is morally better for a woman to be chained to a stranger than to be forgiven for leaning in for a kiss.”

- Hattie’s reasoning to the heartbroken Lucien, who doesn’t quite understand her struggle as a women in London society (Victorian era).

“Her gaze locked with his, and it was one of those transcendent gazes that look inside a man and see him, while letting him see her in return, and the sense of connection turned his knees soft. An old reflex stirred in him to raise an ice wall against such weakness.”

- the moment Lucien falls in love❤️

“A pirate is free. He has seen the world and does bad things and doesn’t care. He just does and takes as he pleases; it’s who he is. There’d be no rules with him.”

— Hattie envying and pirate.

“the part where we lounge in a parlor and read books—they have to be the correct books and they have to be read at appropriate times. Propriety and etiquette rule every step we take, every word we say.”

—Victorian women in London society

“Dangerous, because the legends about the selkies never ended with the trapped female living out her days with the man who had stolen her. Inevitably, someone always found her skin, and she would slip it on and leave her husband and family to return to the sea without a backward glance.”

Lucien’s fear of losing Hattie…

“for thirty years such masterful feats of engineering allowed people to move freely and quickly across vast distance and uninhabitable terrains, and yet a woman must not go shopping or to a gallery by herself. It was too dangerous, they said, for her reputation, her virtue. But who did the endangering? Men.”

“Mr. Blackstone had accused her of finding Tragedy enchanting. But perhaps every woman had known a moment when she felt as though she were drowning, and the only comfort was that there could be some beauty, some dignity, in that, too.”