victorian

Humans are curious creatures. What we cannot see, our logical minds will try to deny.

It's elementary, my dear Winifred.

You are an exceedingly beautiful mystery, one that intrigues me and one that I plan to solve.

Sometimes people do misguided things for the most honorable of reasons.

He had an overwhelming urge to take possession of her lips, silencing any mention of another man__ name.

I should have looked into my own heart, and found this new growth springing up there, and plucked it out while it was young.

the whole of Victorian literature done up in grey paper & neatly tied with string

The physical shape of Mollies paralyses and contortions fit the pattern of late-nineteenth-century hysteria as well _ in particular the phases of "grand hysteria" described by Jean-Martin Charcot, a French physician who became world-famous in the 1870s and 1880s for his studies of hysterics...""The hooplike spasm Mollie experienced sounds uncannily like what Charcot considered the ultimate grand movement, the arc de de cercle (also called arc-en-ciel), in which the patient arched her back, balancing on her heels and the top of her head...""One of his star patients, known to her audiences only as Louise, was a specialist in the arc de cercle _ and had a background and hysterical manifestations quite similar to Mollie's. A small-town girl who made her way to Paris in her teens, Louise had had a disrupted childhood, replete with abandonment and sexual abuse.She entered Salpetriere in 1875, where while under Charcot's care she experienced partial paralysis and complete loss of sensation over the right side of her body, as well as a decrease in hearing, smell, taste, and vision. She had frequent violent, dramatic hysterical fits, alternating with hallucinations and trancelike phases during which she would "see" her mother and other people she knew standing before her (this symptom would manifest itself in Mollie). Although critics, at the time and since, have decried the sometime circus atmosphere of Charcot's lectures, and claimed that he, inadvertently or not, trained his patients how to be hysterical, he remains a key figure in understanding nineteenth-century hysteria.

He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan-a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society.

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides. But the understood incentive on the woman's part was wanting here. Besides, Bathsheba's position as absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the novelty had not yet begun to wear off.

Enlarged sympathy with children was one of the chief contributions made by the Victorian English to real civilization.

There is enough conformity in the world Lord MacCaulay. I doubt that mine, or lack of it, will send the planet from its axis. Meanwhile, my heart does not soar for the riches you set before me. Perhaps one day, I may feel differently. For now, I wish to taste that which most women do not.__ademoiselle Noire - The Gentlemen's Club

Give me the Black Death over a Victorian prude any day. At least the dying screw like it's their last day on earth.

Resting my head on the high-backed chair, I silently marvel at emotion so strong itcan quite literally chase away all reason and good sense. It is something I have neverexperienced. I pity Frances for being victim to such devastating passions. But, if I amhonest, a small part of me envies her, for she possesses something that I should: desirefor my husband. Moreover, she knows what it is to feel alive.

Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there.

He is only fifteen! Does she really think he is prepared for marriage, especially with his intellectual range of a teacup?

Go find your own hiding spot!_ I hissed. __he seat is not wide enough to hold me and that whale you call a nightgown._ Also, we were better off if whoever was coming caught one of us _ and by one of us, I meant Rose.

Lucille, please make them go away!_ she moaned, her voice muffled. __o you think I am a divine being sent from the celestial realm to guard you from the harsh punishment of rousing from your slumber?_ __s that a yes?_ __ am surrounded by idiots.