Sarah Mac’s Reviews > The Rebel of the Family > Status Update

'For the moment her caress was perfectly sincere. She forgot all that had been done whereof she herself was the starting-point, & remembered only that she loved her mother & wanted to make up to her by her own sweetness for the sorrow which that horrid Perdita had caused her.' ....BARF. I can't stand Eva. Go die in a hole, you bitchwhore moo.

Eh, Perdita...I feel you on the quest for "I gotta be meee," but I'd have said yes. I know he's supposed to be the New Rich blustering bore with no sensitivity, but I like Mr Brocklebank. He reminds me of that roaring, rotund silver-magnate in FORTUNE'S MISTRESS. If you can't have love, at least marry the guy with decent morals & deep pockets. 😂

'She was conscious only of a desire to do the right thing--to live by principle & her own conscience. She did not wish to hurt any human being or to be other than faithful & true, loving & loyal. She was wicked, she knew, because she was passionate & violent & without self-command, but was she quite so wicked as mother said?'

'Out in the street as it was--before the very door of her own house--the lamplight from that aristocratic if impecunious dwelling falling full on her flushed face--the man before her neither of her own station nor yet a declared lover--Perdita bent her head & kissed the ungloved hand that held her own.'

'They gambolled over whole prairies & launched their toy-boats on the biggest seas. Wife-beating & bad calico; garotting & the restrictions of trustees; woman's inability to add up her account books--somehow the fault of man, as that she should have to add them up at all was but another instance of his tyranny.' ....Linton's satire of shrieking man-haters is fabulous. 😈

'The girl, who had been the family cross b/c of her comparative plainness & ungainliness, was "commencing to become quite a pretty creature," as Mr Brocklebank said to his sister Clarissa--straightening his back & stroking his chin w/ the self-complacency of a man who has turned out a satisfactory job from poor materials, & scored a success where others had marked a failure.'

'All that was about her faded from her sight--she knew only the quiet waters flowing there, whispering to her to come w/ them to her home, to find in their depths her own eternal rest. "I am ready!" she half sighed; when suddenly some one took her hand & drew her forcibly away from the water's edge.' ....Whew. Dramatic Victorian Suicide!!! has been averted. ;)

'Beautiful as she looked, standing in the sunlight on that day of the flower-show, Eva Winstanley was still more lovely today seen under the soft light of a London drawing-room--one of those luxurious rooms whence the sun is excluded as the worst enemy that women & lovers can have, & where the salvation of waning beauty consists in discreet obscurity.'

--"Connie!" she called in a caressing voice.
--"Bell!" responded the little woman, darting up from the sofa & flinging herself into her arms.
--They kissed each other fondly; as friends who had been separated for as many months or years as they had been parted hours.

.... *clutches pearls*

'But while Thomasina & Eva, the oldest & the youngest, had apparently the sweetest tempers possible, & proved the excellence of her theory, it must be confessed parenthetically that Perdita, the unlucky sandwich, offered but an indifferent example & seemed morally unable to rise out of the awkward squad which is always being drilled & is never fit to appear on parade.'