Hard and callous of heart and dead of soul,
incapable of one thought or emotion that rises above or extends beyond
self, insistent on her own petty claims and ambitions to the exclusion of
all others, ever aiming to achieve these, now by dogged sullen
persistence, now by mean concealments and frauds, no more repellent
portraiture of womanhood has ever been placed before us. The fundamental
character of her entire home relations is, on her first appearance, drawn
by a single delicate touch--her objecting to her brother's red herring,
or rather to its presence after she enters the room, because its odour
jars on her sense of pseudo-refinement. In her relation to her husband
there is not from first to last one shadow of anything that can be called
love, no approach to sympathy or harmony of life. She looks on him
solely as a means for removing herself to what she considers a higher
social circle, securing to her greater ease, freedom, and luxury of daily
life, and ultimately withdrawing her to a wider sphere of petty and
selfish enjoyment. Seeking these ends, she resorts to every mean device
of deceit and concealment.
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