more miles

"Our greatest heart-treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an individual to whom our existence is necessary - some one who is part of our life as we are part of theirs, some one in whose life we feel assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two. And who can this be but a husband or wife? Our parents have other children and themselves, our brothers and sisters marry and have lives apart, so with our friends: but one's husband would be different."

'My Brilliant Career' Miles Franklin. 1901. aged 16.

Sometimes you have unformed thoughts and when reading your thought is expressed for you. This happened last night while finishing the above book. The character, Sybylla, doesn't marry the 'hero' and her explanations for that time are modern, to do with not being seen as a man's property, to have a separate existence, and not be tied to eternal child-rearing (in the days of 10+ kids)

Luckily the world is 100 years different, so I don't have to toss over the hero in order to have life. So not to have this heart-treasure of a husband, is, in the words of Bonnie Tyler 'It's a heart-ache, nothing but a heartache'


ah, I make myself laugh sometimes with this blog..