Absent Husband Quotes

Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.

Who are you?" she said, barely able to hear her own words as her heartbeat thrummed in her ears. "This is your dream, remember? Tell me who I am," he said smiling, absently coiling a tendril of her long brown hair around a finger. She narrowed her eyes at him. "If this is my dream, oneiroi, then answer my question. Who are you?" He was hearing her true voice: that of a natural ruler. She watched him smile at her fearlessness, even as he loomed over her. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, "I am your lord husband.

Will looked at his sister. “And you don’t care about being a Shadowhunter. How is this: I shall write a letter and give it to you if you promise to deliver it home yourself — and not to return.” Cecily recoiled; she had many memories of shouting matches with Will, of the china dolls she had owned that he had broken by dropping them out an attic window; but there was also kindness in her memories: the brother who had bandaged up a cut knee, or retied her hair ribbons when they came loose. That kindness was absent from the Will who stood before her now. Her mother had used to cry for the first year or two after Will went; she had said, in Welsh, holding Cecily to her, that they — the Shadowhunters — would “take all the love out of him.” A cold, unloving people, she had told Cecily, who had forbidden her marriage to her husband. What could he want with them, her Will, her little one? “I will not go,” Cecily said, staring her brother down. “And if you insist that I must, I will — I will —” The door of the attic slid open and Jem stood silhouetted in the doorway…

(Response to King Erik XIV of Sweden's proposal of marriage:) "[W]hile we perceive ... the zeal and love of your mind towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are grieved that we cannot gratify your Serene Highness with the same kind of affection. And that indeed does not happen because we doubt in any way of your love and honour, but, as often we have testified both in words and writing, that we have never yet conceived a feeling of that kind of affection towards anyone. We therefore beg your Serene Highness again and again that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship for the present nor disregard them in the future. ... We certainly think that if God ever direct our hearts to consideration of marriage we shall never accept or choose any absent husband how powerful and wealthy a Prince soever. But that we are not to give you an answer until we have seen your person is so far from the thing itself that we never even considered such a thing. I have always given both to your brother ... and also to your ambassador likewise the same answer with scarcely any variation of the words, that we do not conceive in our heart to take a husband but highly commend this single life, and hope that your Serene Highness will no longer spend time in waiting for us.

A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.

When a man is physically present but emotionally absent, a girl’s heart can feel quite hollow and helpless. This is true whether that man is her father, her husband, or even a man whom she deeply respects.

I’ve been absent from you too long. I miss you so badly and yet this being apart makes me realise you’re not simply the faithful man who loves me so astonishingly well, but an angel, sent for some unfathomable reason to look out for me. I should have realised this truth years ago because you are so extraordinary, so unlike other men, so unlike me, this weak, vain, faithless creature you have been so intent on saving from himself. I should have realised from the first moment I saw you in that trench, when I fell so badly in love with you and hoped you wouldn’t notice. Or perhaps not then, but later, when you saved my life so often just by lending me courage when I was half-mad from fear. How much courage you had to spare – I will never forget. But angels are courageous, aren’t they? I should know. I have never understood why I deserved such grace. I don’t have your faith, Patrick, or your love of God. I am uncertain and afraid, I wish you were with me now, not just in spirit, as I know you are and always have been, but here in body. I need to cower behind you, because if God is real He might be kinder knowing you loved me. If angels need to pray, pray for me.

Pigeon?” “Yeah?” A few moments passed, and then he sighed. “Nothing.” Travis hesitated. “I can’t shake this feeling,” he said under his breath. “What do you mean? Like a bad feeling?” I said, suddenly nervous. He turned to me with concern in his eyes, “I have this crazy feeling that once we get home, I’m going to wake up. Like none of this was real.” I slid my arms around his waist, running my hands up the lean muscles of his back. “Is that what you’re worried about?” He looked down to his wrist, and then glanced to the thick silver band on his left finger. “I just can’t shake the feeling that the bubble’s going to burst, and I’m going to be lying in my bed alone, wishing you were there with me.” “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Trav! I’ve dumped someone for you—twice—I’ve picked up and went to Vegas with you—twice—I’ve literally gone through hell and back, married you and branded myself with your name. I’m running out of ideas to prove to you that I’m yours.” A small smile graced his lips. “I love it when you say that.” “That I’m yours?” I asked. I leaned up on the balls of my feet, pressing my lips against his. “I. Am. Yours. Mrs. Travis Maddox, forever and always.” His small smile faded as he looked at the boarding gate and then down to me. “I’m gonna fuck it up, Pigeon. You’re gonna get sick of my shit.” I laughed. “I’m sick of your shit, now. I still married you.” “I thought once we got married, that I’d feel a little more reassured about losing you. But I feel like if I get on that plane….” “Travis? I love you. Let’s go home.” His eyebrows pulled in. “You won’t leave me, right? Even when I’m a pain in the ass?” “I vowed in front of God…and Elvis…that I wouldn’t, didn’t I?” His frown lightened a bit. “This is forever?” One corner of my mouth turned up. “Would it make you feel better if we made a wager?” “What kind of husband would I be if I bet against my own marriage?” I smiled. “The stupid kind. Didn’t you listen to your dad when he told you not to bet against me?” He raised an eyebrow. “So you’re that sure, huh? You’d bet on it?” I wrapped my arms around his neck and smiled against his lips. “I’d bet my first born. That’s how sure I am.” And then the peace returned. “You can’t be that sure,” he said, the anxiousness absent from his voice. I raised an eyebrow, and my mouth pulled to one side. “Wanna bet?

She only had to hang out with Ava a couple of times before she saw her opening. Of course Ava’s Harvard-educated doctor husband was absent and neglectful; of course she couldn’t admit that she hated being a lawyer and twisted herself into contortions downplaying her son’s developmental issues. As far as Winnie could tell, Ava’s entire life could be boiled down to this: great on paper, rotten everywhere else.

After he’d been absent for a month, in 1998, I went to the police station to report the disappearance of my husband.

Stop fussing,” Legna admonished her, tapping her finger against Isabella’s absently energetic hand. “I’m getting married in a few minutes, Legna, I think I’ve a right to fuss.” Isabella felt her heart turn over as she spoke aloud, listening to herself talk about her impending marriage. “Well, brides are supposed to be blushing, as I understand it. At the moment you are no less than five shades of gray.” Legna continued with her interrupted weaving of more ribbons in Isabella’s hair. “And as much as it matches the silver of your dress, I think you would look better with a little natural color.” Legna reached to smooth down a portion of the shimmering silver fabric that draped off of the bride’s shoulders in a Grecian fashion. “You know,” she pressed, “there are only two nights in a year when Demons perform a joining ceremony. Samhain and Beltane. If you pass out tonight, you will have to wait until next spring.” “Thanks for the bulletin. You’re too kind,” Isabella retorted dryly. “Actually, purely out of kindness, I will tell you that your future husband is just shy of tossing his cookies himself, so you can take comfort in knowing he is just as nervous as you are.” “Legna!” Bella laughed. “You’re a wretch!” She turned to look at the female Demon, briefly admiring how pretty she looked in her soft white chiffon gown. “And how would you know? You’re standing too close to me to be able to sense his emotions.” “Because when I went to fetch the ribbons, he was seated next to Noah with his head between his knees.” Legna giggled. “I have never seen anything rattle Jacob before. I cannot help but find it amusing.

She kept saying, "My husband will be back soon. He went for help. He'll be back." But that's the kind of lie people tell sometimes when they got only strangers to rely on. There's shame in that, so people lie.

At eight years old, Katherine Lundy already knew the shape of her entire life. Could have drawn it on a map if pressed: the long highways of education, the soft valleys of settling down. She assumed, in her practical way, that a husband would appear one day, summoned out of the ether like a necessary milestone, and she would work at the library while he worked someplace equally sensible, and they would have children of their own, because that was how the world was structured. Children begat adults begat children, now and forever.

While altering the saga of Odysseus’s Return to make my Elyman suitors serve as Penelope’s lovers, I had to protect myself against scandal. What if someone recognized the story and supposed that I, Nausicaa the irreproachable, had played the promiscuous harlot in my father’s absence? So, according to my poem, Penelope must have remained faithful to Odysseus throughout those twenty years. And because this change meant that Aphrodite had failed to take her traditional revenge, I must make Poseidon, not her, the enemy who delayed him on his homeward voyage after the Fall of Troy. I should therefore have to omit the stories of Penelope’s banishment and the oar mistaken for a flail, and Odysseus’s death from Telemachus’s sting-ray spear. When I told Phemius of these decisions, he pointed out, rather nastily, that since Poseidon had fought for the Greeks against the Trojans, and since Odysseus had never failed to honour him, I must justify this enmity by some anecdote. “Very well,” I answered. “Odysseus blinded a Cyclops who, happening to be Poseidon’s son, prayed to him for vengeance.” “My dear Princess, every Cyclops in the smithies of Etna was born to Uranus, Poseidon’s grandfather, by Mother Earth.” “Mine was an exceptional Cyclops,” I snapped. “He claimed Poseidon as his father and kept sheep in a Sican cave, like Conturanus. I shall call him Polyphemus—that is, ‘famous’—to make my hearers think him a more important character than he really was.” “Such deceptions tangle the web of poetry.” “But if I offer Penelope as a shining example for wives to follow when their husbands are absent on long journeys, that will excuse the deception.

The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the bible--for she often read aloud when her husband was absent--soon awakened my curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading, and roused in me the desire to learn. Having no fear of my kind mistress before my eyes, (she had given me no reason to fear,) I frankly asked her to teach me to read; and without hesitation, the dear woman began the task, and very soon, by her assistance, I was master of the alphabet, and could spell words of three or four letters...Master Hugh was amazed at the simplicity of his spouse, and, probably for the first time, he unfolded to her the true philosophy of slavery, and the peculiar rules necessary to be observed by masters and mistresses, in the management of their human chattels. Mr. Auld promptly forbade the continuance of her [reading] instruction; telling her, in the first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also unsafe, and could only lead to mischief.... Mrs. Auld evidently felt the force of his remarks; and, like an obedient wife, began to shape her course in the direction indicated by her husband. The effect of his words, on me, was neither slight nor transitory. His iron sentences--cold and harsh--sunk deep into my heart, and stirred up not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, but awakened within me a slumbering train of vital thought. It was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery, against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit: the white man's power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man. "Very well," thought I; "knowledge unfits a child to be a slave." I instinctively assented to the proposition; and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom. This was just what I needed; and got it at a time, and from a source, whence I least expected it.... Wise as Mr. Auld was, he evidently underrated my comprehension, and had little idea of the use to which I was capable of putting the impressive lesson he was giving to his wife.... That which he most loved I most hated; and the very determination which he expressed to keep me in ignorance, only rendered me the more resolute in seeking intelligence.

You are not listening to my moral remarks, Mrs. Laurence,"—and Laurie paused, for Amy's eyes had an absent look, though fixed upon his face. "Yes I am, and admiring the dimple in your chin at the same time. I don't wish to make you vain, but I must confess that I'm prouder of my handsome husband than of all his money. Don't laugh,—but your nose is such a comfort to me," and Amy softly caressed the well-cut feature with artistic satisfaction.

That the Old Testament represents God chiefly as angry Judge and vicious Warrior is a false stereotype. While these images are not absent, they are more than balanced by striking portrayals of God as Lover or Husband, infatuated with Israel beyond all reason or deserving. God is not too proud to grieve terribly over Israel's unfaithfulness, nor to be giddy over her return home. ... [This covenant's] primary quality is love at the highest pitch of intensity.

In the first year of Martha`s life I discovered that I no longer loved my husband. A hard year, the baby barely slept and wouldn`t let me sleep. Physical tiredness is a magnifying glass. I was too tired to study, to think, to laugh, to cry, to love that man who was too intelligent, too stubbornly involved in his wager with life, too absent. Love required energy, I hand none left. When he began with caresses and kisses, I became anxious, I felt that I was a stimulus abused for his solitary pleasures.

Who are you?" she said, barely able to hear her own words as her heartbeat thrummed in her ears. He froze at her question and darted his eyes from her gaze, taking in, memorizing, her face and neck, the lines of her collarbone. He reached for a lock of hair that had spilled over her breast. "This is your dream, remember? Tell me who I am," he said smiling, absently coiling the long brown tendril around a finger. She narrowed her eyes at him, her tone firm. "If this is my dream, oneiroi, then answer my question. Who are you?" He was hearing her true voice- that of a natural ruler. His smile widened at her fearlessness, even though he was twice her size and loomed over her, caging her body with his. "I am not an oneiroi, sweet one." "What are you, then?" "Deathless," he said simply. "Like you." "Wh-who are you?" she whispered. He slowly lowered himself to her, hovering just above her, the heat of his chest making contact with her, making her quiver, making her want to pull the weight of his body down to cover hers. He whispered in her ear. "I am your lord husband.

Living without expectations is hard but, when you can do it, good. Living without hope is harder, and that is bad. You have got to have hope, and you mustn’t shirk it. Love, after all, “hopeth all things.” But maybe you must learn, and it is hard learning, not to hope out loud, especially for other people. You must not let your hope turn into expectation. But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remembered now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive. . . Even old, your husband is the young man you remember now. Even dead, he is the man you remember, not as he was but as he is, alive still in your love. Death is a sort of lens, though I used to think of it as a wall or a shut door. It changes things and makes them clear. Maybe it is the truest way of knowing this dream, this brief and timeless life. . . As I have told it over, the past visible again in the present, the dead living still in their absence, this dream of time seems to come to rest in eternity. My mind, I think, has started to become, it is close to being, the room of love for the absent are present, the dead are alive, time is eternal, and all the creatures prosperous. The room of love is the love that holds us all, and it is not ours. It goes back before we were born. It goes all the way back. It is Heaven’s. Or it is Heaven, and we are in it only by willingness.

Couples who regularly practice empathy see stunning results. It is the independent variable that predicts a successful marriage, according to behaviorist John Gottman, who, post hoc criticisms notwithstanding, forecasts divorce probabilities with accuracy rates approaching 90 percent. In Gottman’s studies, if the wife felt she was being heard by her husband—to the point that he accepted her good influence on his behavior—the marriage was essentially divorce-proof. (Interestingly, whether the husband felt heard was not a factor in divorce rates.) If that empathy trafficking was absent, the marriage foundered. Research

and were greatly distressed that their only son must be taken from them. We felt a spirit of prayer for him, and earnestly besought the Lord to spare his life. We believed that he would get well, although to all appearances there was no possibility of his recovery. It was a powerful season. My husband raised him in his arms, and exclaimed, ‘You will not die, but live!’ We believed that God would be glorified in his recovery. We left Dartmouth, and were absent about eight days. When we returned, the sick boy came out to meet us. He had gained four pounds in flesh. We found the household rejoicing in God for his wonderful work. 

The culture that created the KJV championed marriage as the ideal state decreed by God. The holy (male-headed) household formed the center of English society, from the household of the urban merchant to the lordly estates of the members of Parliament. Law codes favored husbands and male heirs by excluding women from inheritance, reducing married women to the legal status of children, and elevating marriage as key for securing masculine social rank and authority. Yet early modern biblical scholars found that marriage was puzzlingly absent from the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible), especially for an institution thought to be championed by God.

So be the father and husband who makes wild love to your wife at night, wakes early in the morning to bake your family chocolate chip cookies for the evening family dinner, then rips your boys out of bed to go lift heavy kettlebells in the garage and drag sandbags up and down the driveway—followed by dirty, sweaty bear hugs afterward. But don't be the father and husband who stays absent and distracted with "noble" email and social media work all day, then gathers the family round Netflix in the basement in the evening so they can eat takeout while you have an excuse to dink on your phone some more as they're distracted by their own giant screen.

Entering the office, Evie found Sebastian and Cam on opposite sides of the desk. They both mulled over account ledgers, scratching out some entries with freshly inked pens, and making notations beside the long columns. Both men looked up as she crossed the threshold. Evie met Sebastian’s gaze only briefly; she found it hard to maintain her composure around him after the intimacy of the previous night. He paused in mid-sentence as he stared at her, seeming to forget what he had been saying to Cam. It seemed that neither of them was yet comfortable with feelings that were still too new and powerful. Murmuring good morning to them both, she bid them to remain seated, and she went to stand beside Sebastian’s chair. “Have you breakfasted yet, my lord?” she asked. Sebastian shook his head, a smile glinting in his eyes. “Not yet.” “I’ll go to the kitchen and see what is to be had.” “Stay a moment,” he urged. “We’re almost finished.” As the two men discussed a few last points of business, which pertained to a potential investment in a proposed shopping bazaar to be constructed on St. James Street, Sebastian picked up Evie’s hand, which was resting on the desk. Absently he drew the backs of her fingers against the edge of his jaw and his ear while contemplating the written proposal on the desk before him. Although Sebastian was not aware of what the casual familiarity of the gesture revealed, Evie felt her color rise as she met Cam’s gaze over her husband’s downbent head. The boy sent her a glance of mock reproof, like that of a nursemaid who had caught two children playing a kissing game, and he grinned as her blush heightened further. Oblivious to the byplay, Sebastian handed the proposal to Cam, who sobered instantly. “I don’t like the looks of this,” Sebastian commented. “It’s doubtful there will be enough business in the area to sustain an entire bazaar, especially at those rents. I suspect within a year it will turn into a white elephant.” “White elephant?” Evie asked. A new voice came from the doorway, belonging to Lord Westcliff. “A white elephant is a rare animal,” the earl replied, smiling, “that is not only expensive but difficult to maintain. Historically, when an ancient king wished to ruin someone he would gift him with a white elephant.” Stepping into the office, Westcliff bowed over Evie’s hand and spoke to Sebastian. “Your assessment of the proposed bazaar is correct, in my opinion. I was approached with the same investment opportunity not long ago, and I rejected it on the same grounds.” “No doubt we’ll both be proven wrong,” Sebastian said wryly. “One should never try to predict anything regarding women and their shopping.

In September 1841 the journey from Torquay was actually achieved, and Miss Barrett returned to her father’s house in London, from which she was never to be absent for more than a few hours at a time until the day, five years later, when she finally left it to join her husband, Robert Browning. Her life was that of an invalid, confined to her room for the greater part of each year, and unable to see any but a few intimate friends. Still, she regained some sort of strength, especially during the warmth of the summer months, and was able to throw herself with real interest into literary work. In a life such as this there are few outward events to record, and its story is best told in Miss Barrett’s own letters, which, for the most part, need little comment.

The photographer was taking pictures with a small pocket camera but the sergeant sent him back to the car for his big Bertillon camera. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed left the cellar to look around. The apartment was only one room wide but four storeys high. The front was flush with the sidewalk, and the front entrance elevated by two recessed steps. The alleyway at the side slanted down from the sidewalk sufficiently to drop the level of the door six feet below the ground-floor level. The cellar, which could only be entered by the door at the side, was directly below the ground-floor rooms. There were no apartments. Each of the four floors had three bedrooms opening on to the public hall, and to the rear was a kitchen and a bath and a separate toilet to serve each floor. There were three tenants on each floor, their doors secured by hasps and staples to be padlocked when they were absent, bolts and chains and floor locks and angle bars to protect them from intruders when they were present. The doors were pitted and scarred either because of lost keys or attempted burglary, indicating a continuous warfare between the residents and enemies from without, rapists, robbers, homicidal husbands and lovers, or the landlord after his rent. The walls were covered with obscene graffiti, mammoth sexual organs, vulgar limericks, opened legs, telephone numbers, outright boasting, insidious suggestions, and impertinent or pertinent comments about various tenants’ love habits, their mothers and fathers, the legitimacy of their children. “And people live here,” Grave Digger said, his eyes sad. “That’s what it was made for.” “Like maggots in rotten meat.” “It’s rotten enough.” Twelve mailboxes were nailed to the wall in the front hall. Narrow stairs climbed to the top floor. The ground-floor hallway ran through a small back courtyard where four overflowing garbage cans leaned against the wall. “Anybody can come in here day or night,” Grave Digger said. “Good for the whores but hard on the children.” “I wouldn’t want to live here if I had any enemies,” Coffin Ed said. “I’d be scared to go to the john.” “Yeah, but you’d have central heating.” “Personally, I’d rather live in the cellar. It’s private with its own private entrance and I could control the heat.” “But you’d have to put out the garbage cans,” Grave Digger said. “Whoever occupied that whore’s crib ain’t been putting out any garbage cans.” “Well, let’s wake up the brothers on the ground floor.” “If they ain’t already awake.

Lively as kittens,” West said as he and Devon walked to the library. “They’re quite wasted out here in the country. I’ll confess, I never knew that the company of innocent girls could be so amusing.” “What if they were to take part in the London season?” Devon asked. It was one of approximately a thousand questions buzzing in his mind. “How would you rate their prospects?” West looked bemused. “At catching husbands? Nonexistent.” “Even Lady Helen?” “Lady Helen is an angel. Lovely, quiet, accomplished…she should have her pick of suitors. But the men who would be appropriate for her will never come up to scratch. Nowadays no one can afford a girl who lacks a dowry.” “There are men who could afford her,” Devon said absently. “Who?” “Some of the fellows we’re acquainted with…Severin, or Winterborne…” “If they’re friends of ours, I wouldn’t pair Lady Helen with one of them. She was bred to marry a cultivated man of leisure, not a barbarian.” “I would hardly call a department store owner a barbarian.” “Rhys Winterborne is vulgar, ruthless, willing to compromise any principle for personal gain…qualities I admire, of course…but he would never do for Lady Helen. They would make each other exceedingly unhappy.” “Of course they would. It’s marriage.

There is no psychology in a fairy tale. The characters have little interior life; their motives are clear and obvious. If people are good, they are good, and if bad, they’re bad. Even when the princess in ‘The Three Snake Leaves’…inexplicably and ungratefully turns against her husband, we know about it from the moment it happens. Nothing of that sort is concealed. The tremors and mysteries of human awareness, the whispers of memory, the promptings of half-understood regret or doubt or desire that are so much part of the subject matter of the modern novel are absently entirely. One might almost say that the characters in a fairy tale are not actually conscious. They seldom have names of their own. More often than not they’re known by their occupation or their social position, or by a quirk of their dress: the miller, the princess, the captain, the Bearskin, Little Red Riding Hood. When they do have a name it’s usually Hans, just as Jack is the hero of every British fairy tale. The most fitting pictorial representation of fairy-tale characters seems to me to be found not in any of the beautifully illustrated editions of Grimm that have been published over the years, but in the little cardboard cut-out figures that come with the toy theatre.

Mrs. Glass, who had resumed staring at the blue bathmat, gave an absent-minded nod at this ‘fair warning.’ And at that instant, more than just mentionably, had Zooey seen her face, and particularly her eyes, he might have had a strong impulse, passing or not, to recall, or reconstruct, or reinflect the greater part of his share of the conversation that had passed between them--to temper it, to soften it. On the other hand, he might not have. It was a very touch-and-go business, in 1955, to get a wholly plausible reading from Mrs. Glass's face, and especially from her enormous blue eyes. Where once, a few years earlier, her eyes alone could break the news (either to people or to bathmats) that two of her sons were dead, one by suicide (her favorite, her most intricately calibrated, her kindest son), and one killed in World War II (her only truly lighthearted son)--where once Bessie Glass's eyes alone could report these facts, with an eloquence and a seeming passion for detail that neither her husband nor any of her adult surviving children could bear to look at, let alone take in, now, in 1955, she was apt to use this same terrible Celtic equipment to break the news, usually at the front door, that the new delivery boy hadn't brought the leg of lamb in time for dinner or that some remote Hollywood starlet's marriage was on the rocks.

Am I to assume the Valerie I was introduced to earlier was the Valerie of our greenhouse notes?” He realized his mistake the instant her eyes clouded over and she glanced in the direction he’d looked. “Yes.” “Shall I ask Willington to clear his ballroom so you have the requisite twenty paces? Naturally, I’ll stand as your second.” Elizabeth drew a shaky breath, and a smile curved her lips. “Is she wearing a bow?” Ian looked and shook his head. “I’m afraid not.” “Does she have an earring?” He glanced again and frowned. “I think that’s a wart.” Her smile finally reached her eyes. “It’s not a large target, but I suppose-“ “Allow me,” he gravely replied, and she laughed. The last strains of their waltz were dying away, and as they left the dance floor Ian watched Mondevale making his way toward the Townsendes, who’d returned to the ballroom. “Now that you’re a marquess,” Elizabeth asked, “will you live in Scotland or in England?” “I only accepted the title, not the money or the lands,” he replied absently, watching Mondevale. “I’ll explain everything to you tomorrow morning at your house. Mondevale is going to ask you to dance as soon as we reach the Townsendes, so listen closely-I’m going to ask you to dance again later. Turn me down.” She sent him a puzzled look, but she nodded. “Is there anything else?” she asked when he was about to relinquish her to her friends. “There’s a great deal else, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.” Mystified, Elizabeth turned her attention to Viscount Mondevale. Alex watched the byplay between Elizabeth and Ian but her mind was elsewhere. While the couple danced, Alex had told her husband exactly what she thought of Ian Thornton who’d first ruined Elizabeth’s reputation and now deceived her into thinking he was still a man of very modest means. Instead of agreeing that Thornton was completely without principles, Jordan had calmly insisted that Ian intended to set matters aright in the morning, and then he’d made her, and his grandmother, promise not to tell Elizabeth anything until Ian had been given the opportunity to do so himself. Dragging her thoughts back to the ballroom, Alex hoped more than anything that Ian Thornton would do nothing more to hurt her good friend. By the end of the evening a majority of the guests at the Willington ball had drawn several conclusions: first, that Ian Thornton was definitely the natural grandson of the Duke of Stanhope (which everyone claimed to have always believed); second, that Elizabeth Cameron had very probably rebuffed his scandalous advances two years ago (which everyone claimed to have always believed); third, that since she had rejected his second request for a dance tonight, she might actually prefer her former suitor Viscount Mondevale (which hardly anyone could really believe).

Living without expectations is hard but, when you can do it, good. Living without hope is harder, and that is bad. You have got to have hope, and you mustn’t shirk it. Love, after all, “hopeth all things.” But maybe you must learn, and it is hard learning, not to hope out loud, especially for other people. You must not let your hope turn into expectation. But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remembered now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive. . . Even old, your husband is the young man you remember now. Even dead, he is the man you remember, not as he was but as he is, alive still in your love. Death is a sort of lens, though I used to think of it as a wall or a shut door. It changes things and makes them clear. Maybe it is the truest way of knowing this dream, this brief and timeless life. . . As I have told it over, the past visible again in the present, the dead living still in their absence, this dream of time seems to come to rest in eternity. My mind, I think, has started to become, it is close to being, the room of love for the absent are present, the dead are alive, time is eternal, and all the creatures prosperous. The room of love is the love that holds us all, and it is not ours. It goes back before we were born. It goes all the way back. It is Heaven’s. Or it is Heaven, and we are in it only by willingness.

Elizabeth’s concern that Ian might insult them, either intentionally or otherwise, soon gave way to admiration and then to helpless amusement as he sat for the next half-hour, charming them all with an occasional lazy smile or interjecting a gallant compliment, while they spent the entire time debating whether to sell the chocolates being donated by Gunther’s for $5 or $6 per box. Despite Ian’s outwardly bland demeanor, Elizabeth waited uneasily for him to say he’d buy the damned cartload of chocolates for $10 apiece, if it would get them on to the next problem, which she knew was what he was dying to say. But she needn’t have worried, for he continued to positively exude pleasant interest. Four times, the committee paused to solicit his advice; four times, he smilingly made excellent suggestions; four times, they ignored what he suggested. And four times, he seemed not to mind in the least or even notice. Making a mental note to thank him profusely for his incredible forbearance, Elizabeth kept her attention on her guests and the discussion, until she inadvertently glanced in his direction, and her breath caught. Seated on the opposite side of the gathering from her, he was now leaning back in his chair, his left ankle propped atop his right knee, and despite his apparent absorption in the topic being discussed, his heavy-lidded gaze was roving meaningfully over her breasts. One look at the smile tugging at his lips and Elizabeth realized that he wanted her to know it. Obviously he’d decided that both she and he were wasting their time with the committee, and he was playing an amusing game designed to either divert her or discomfit her entirely, she wasn’t certain which. Elizabeth drew a deep breath, ready to blast a warning look at him, and his gaze lifted slowly from her gently heaving bosom, traveled lazily up her throat, paused at her lips, and then lifted to her narrowed eyes. Her quelling glance earned her nothing but a slight, challenging lift of his brows and a decidedly sensual smile, before his gaze reversed and began a lazy trip downward again. Lady Wiltshire’s voice rose, and she said for the second time, “Lady Thornton, what do you think?” Elizabeth snapped her gaze from her provoking husband to Lady Wiltshire. “I-I agree,” she said without the slightest idea of what she was agreeing with. For the next five minutes, she resisted the tug of Ian’s caressing gaze, firmly refusing to even glance his way, but when the committee reembarked on the chocolate issue again, she stole a look at him. The moment she did, he captured her gaze, holding it, while he, with an outward appearance of a man in thoughtful contemplation of some weighty problem, absently rubbed his forefinger against his mouth, his elbow propped on the arm of his chair. Elizabeth’s body responded to the caress he was offering her as if his lips were actually on hers, and she drew a long, steadying breath as he deliberately let his eyes slide to her breasts again. He knew exactly what his gaze was doing to her, and Elizabeth was thoroughly irate at her inability to ignore its effect. The committee departed on schedule a half-hour later amid reminders that the next meeting would be held at Lady Wiltshire’s house. Before the door closed behind them, Elizabeth rounded on her grinning, impenitent husband in the drawing room. “You wretch!” she exclaimed. “How could you?” she demanded, but in the midst of her indignant protest, Ian shoved his hands into her hair, turned her face up, and smothered her words with a ravenous kiss. “I haven’t forgiven you,” she warned him in bed an hour later, her cheek against his chest. Laughter, rich and deep, rumbled beneath her ear. “No?” “Absolutely not. I’ll repay you if it’s the last thing I do.” “I think you already have,” he said huskily, deliberately misunderstanding her meaning.

One evening in April a thirty-two-year-old woman, unconscious and severely injured, was admitted to the hospital in a provincial town south of Copenhagen. She had a concussion and internal bleeding, her legs and arms were broken in several places, and she had deep lesions in her face. A gas station attendant in a neighboring village, beside the bridge over the highway to Copenhagen, had seen her go the wrong way up the exit and drive at high speed into the oncoming traffic. The first three approaching cars managed to maneuver around her, but about 200 meters after the junction she collided head-on with a truck. The Dutch driver was admitted for observation but released the next day. According to his statement he started to brake a good 100 meters before the crash, while the car seemed to actually increase its speed over the last stretch. The front of the vehicle was totally crushed, part of the radiator was stuck between the road and the truck's bumper, and the woman had to be cut free. The spokesman for emergency services said it was a miracle she had survived. On arrival at the hospital the woman was in very critical condition, and it was twenty-four hours before she was out of serious danger. Her eyes were so badly damaged that she lost her sight. Her name was Lucca. Lucca Montale. Despite the name there was nothing particularly Italian about her appearance. She had auburn hair and green eyes in a narrow face with high cheek-bones. She was slim and fairly tall. It turned out she was Danish, born in Copenhagen. Her husband, Andreas Bark, arrived with their small son while she was still on the operating table. The couple's home was an isolated old farmhouse in the woods seven kilometers from the site of the accident. Andreas Bark told the police he had tried to stop his wife from driving. He thought she had just gone out for a breath of air when he heard the car start. By the time he got outside he saw it disappearing along the road. She had been drinking a lot. They had had a marital disagreement. Those were the words he used; he was not questioned further on that point. Early in the morning, when Lucca Montale was moved from the operating room into intensive care, her husband was still in the waiting room with the sleeping boy's head on his lap. He was looking out at the sky and the dark trees when Robert sat down next to him. Andreas Bark went on staring into the gray morning light with an exhausted, absent gaze. He seemed slightly younger than Robert, in his late thirties. He had dark, wavy hair and a prominent chin, his eyes were narrow and deep-set, and he was wearing a shabby leather jacket. Robert rested his hands on his knees in the green cotton trousers and looked down at the perforations in the leather uppers of his white clogs. He realized he had forgotten to take off his plastic cap after the operation. The thin plastic crackled between his hands. Andreas looked at him and Robert straightened up to meet his gaze. The boy woke.

As the most perfect subject for painting I have already specified inwardly satisfied [reconciled and peaceful] love, the object of which is not a purely spiritual ‘beyond’ but is present, so that we can see love itself before us in what is loved. The supreme and unique form of this love is Mary’s love for the Christ-child, the love of the one mother who has borne the Saviour of the world and carries him in her arms. This is the most beautiful subject to which Christian art in general, and especially painting in its religious sphere, has risen. The love of God, and in particular the love of Christ who sits at’ the right hand of God, is of a purely spiritual kind. The object of this love is visible only to the eye of the soul, so that here there is strictly no question of that duality which love implies, nor is any natural bond established between the lovers or any linking them together from the start. On the other hand, any other love is accidental in the inclination of one lover for another, or,’ alternatively, the lovers, e.g. brothers and sisters or a father in his love for his children, have outside this relation other conceI1l8 with an essential claim on them. Fathers or brothers have to apply themselves to the world, to the state, business, war, or, in short, to general purposes, while sisters become wives, mothers, and so forth. But in the case of maternal love it is generally true that a mother’s love for her child is neither something accidental just a single feature in her life, but, on the contrary, it is her supreme vocation on earth, and her natural character and most sacred calling directly coincide. But while other loving mothers see and feel in their child their husband and their inmost union with him, in Mary’s relation to her child this aspect is always absent. For her feeling has nothing in common with a wife’s love for her husband; on the contrary, her relation to Joseph is more like a sister’s to a brother, while on Joseph’s side there is a secret awe of the child who is God’s and Mary’s. Thus religious love in its fullest and most intimate human form we contemplate not in the suffering and risen Christ or in his lingering amongst his friends but in the person of Mary with her womanly feeling. Her whole heart and being is human love for the child that she calls her own, and at the same time adoration, worship, and love of God with whom she feels herself at one. She is humble in God’s sight and yet has an infinite sense of being the one woman who is blessed above all other virgins. She is not self-subsistent on her own account, but is perfect only in her child, in God, but in him she is satisfied and blessed, whether. at the manger or as the Queen of Heaven, without passion or longing, without any further need, without any aim other than to have and to hold what she has. In its religious subject-matter the portrayal of this love has a wide series of events, including, for example, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth, the Flight into Egypt, etc. And then there are, added to this, other subjects from the later life of Christ, i.e. the Disciples and the women who follow him and in whom the love of God becomes more or less a personal relation of love for a living and present Saviour who walks amongst them as an actual man; there is also the love of the angels who hover over the birth of Christ and many other scenes in his life, in serious worship or innocent joy. In all these subjects it is painting especially which presents the peace and full satisfaction of love. But nevertheless this peace is followed by the deepest suffering. Mary sees Christ carry his cross, she sees him suffer and die on the cross, taken down from the cross and buried, and no grief of others is so profound as hers. Mary’s grief is of a totally different kind. She is emotional, she feels the thrust of the dagger into the centre of her soul, her heart breaks, but she does not turn into stone.

Donald Trump’s marriage was perplexing to almost everybody around him—or it was, anyway, for those without private jets and many homes. He and Melania spent relatively little time together. They could go days at a time without contact, even when they were both in Trump Tower. Often she did not know where he was, or take much notice of that fact. Her husband moved between residences as he would move between rooms. Along with knowing little about his whereabouts, she knew little about his business, and took at best modest interest in it. An absentee father for his first four children, Trump was even more absent for his fifth, Barron, his son with Melania. Now on his third marriage, he told friends he thought he had finally perfected the art: live and let live—“Do your own thing.

Where the parents are not 'good enough' the rest of the programme for life may be distorted and later stages in the archetypal sequence may fail to be realized. Thus, the boy whose father was inadequate or absent may fail to actualize his masculine potential sufficiently to establish the social or vocational role his talents equip him for, or he may be unable to sustain a relationship with a member of the opposite sex long enough for him to become an adequate husband or father himself.

Maybe the future already exists. Maybe I will see my husband again one day. Maybe time is a circle. Or maybe not. Maybe all that matters is that love is a circle. Infinite. Eternal. Present, even when the person you want to be there most is absent.

This is my sister, Erika, her husband, Ian, and their daughter, um…” Jason took on an absent-minded expression, then his face lit up with recollection. “…Ellie,” he said. “This is my niece, Ellie.

Effectively communicate feelings and needs: Visiting the sister-in-law Because Tom’s job is so hectic, Rebecca barely gets to see him during the week, and she often feels very alone. On Saturdays, she usually visits her sister, who lives close by. Tom doesn’t typically join her for these visits; he likes to stay home and veg out on the couch. Generally, this is fine with her, but this Saturday, after a particularly long week at work, when Tom was even more absent than usual, she becomes very insistent that he come along. Tom, exhausted from his work week, is adamant about not wanting to go. Rebecca won’t take no for an answer and pushes the issue. He reacts by clamming up even more. Finally she tells him he’s being selfish, he ends up in front of the TV not talking, and she ends up going alone. Rebecca acts in a way that is very typical of people with an anxious attachment style. Because her husband’s being at work more than usual during the week has activated her attachment system, she feels a need to reconnect. What she needs most is to feel that Tom is available to her—that he cares and wants to be with her. However, instead of saying this directly and explaining what is bothering her, she uses protest behavior—accusing him of being selfish and insisting that he come to her sister’s. Tom is bewildered that Rebecca is suddenly behaving so irrationally—after all, they have an understanding that he doesn’t have to go to her sister’s. How different Tom’s reaction might be if Rebecca simply said, “I know you hate going to my sister’s, but it would mean the world to me if you could come this one time. I’ve hardly seen you all week and I don’t want to miss out on any more time together.” Effectively expressing your emotional needs is even better than the other person magically reading your mind. It means that you’re an active agent who can be heard, and it opens the door for a much richer emotional dialogue. Even if Tom still chose not to join Rebecca, if he understood how she felt, he could find another way to reassure her: “If you really want me to go, I will. But I also want to relax. How about we go out tonight—just the two of us? Would that make you feel better? You don’t really want me at your sister’s anyway, do you? I will get in the way of the two of you catching up.

Your mother doesn't know these things,” he said, a note of pleading in his voice. "She has always been that way. She is an artist. Her feet barely touch the ground. I've been the one to keep her tethered to the earth. And now it's your job. And you're too young, and it's not fair, but there it is." He was right. It wasn't fair.

Our golden retriever Beau was our master teacher in how to greet a loved one. There were days when he would almost knock my husband over after work, meeting him at the front door with happy crying, enthusiastic tail wagging, and a big smile. When Beau died, his evening greeting was noticeably absent. But a few days later, my daughter and I had an idea: When we heard the doorknob turn, we would run to the door, hugging and kissing my husband in a pretty good imitation of Beau. Our dog had taught us how to show love by sincerely welcoming the people we care about into our orbit.

Botolph, Wednesday May 7, 1681 On the day before we left with Joshua in his cart, I hurried to finish my chores. I checked the supplies in the larder to make sure there’d be enough butter and eggs, beef and poultry – milk, cheese, bread – to feed the boarders for a week so Ralph wouldn’t have to look for provisions right away. I try to make things easy for my son, because he’s always been absent-minded and more so since the death of his father, which came not directly from a war injury, but because days on end out of doors in the cruelest time of the year made him susceptible to illness. As a result, he succumbed to pleurisy, which a stronger man might have resisted. I closed the larder door and gazed out the window. The sunlight on the harbor seemed as yellow as lemon, as brilliant as a field of marigolds. I imagined a rainbow of fragrances – lavender, lilac, witch hazel, hawthorn – that used to please me when I was a youngster. I visited Deputy Governor Drayton early in the afternoon. People like me, a child of the first pioneers to Sagadac, don’t usually become friendly with representatives of the royal government for the same reason that we’ve stopped making friends with natives: we don’t know what they’ll think of us. I decided after my husband Cyrus died, however, to break through some of the restrictions we put on ourselves.

When you think of me, you must think of me as one who is truly happy. It is true, I want a great many things I haven't got, but I don't want them enough to be discontented and not enjoy the many blessings that are mine. I have my home among the blue mountains, my healthy, well-formed children, my clean, honest husband, my kind, gentle milk cows, my garden which I make myself. I have loads and loads of flowers which I tend myself. There are lots of chickens, turkeys, and pigs which are my own special care. I have some slow old gentle horses and an old wagon. I can load up the kiddies and go where I please any time. I have the best, kindest neighbors and I have my dear absent friends. Do you wonder I am so happy? When I think of it all, I wonder how I can crowd all my joy into one short life.

You have no wedding ring, Mrs. Seaton, nor does your finger look to have ever been graced by one.” “Since I have no husband at present,” Anna said, retrieving her hand, “a ring is understandably absent also.

How did you two meet?” she asks. She tilts her head to the side. Something tells me that she already knows the story, but her husband has set aside his Blackberry and is listening now. Emily looks up at me and blinks her pretty brown eyes. “I went into his tattoo shop to get a tattoo.” She grins. “And he put the moves on me.” She nudges me in the side. “Can I tell them what happened next?” I can feel her laughter against my side. “She punched me in the face, Mrs. Madison.” I reach up and absently stroke across my nose. “He tried to put the moves on me, and I was angry.” She shrugs, but she’s still laughing. “I’ll never forget the look on his face.” “One minute I think I’m going to get to spend some time with a pretty girl,” I say. Emily squeezes my hand when I say “spend some time” because we both know I tried to lay her, just like I used to do with every woman I met. “And the next, she breaks my nose.” Emily laughs. She tugs my sleeve until I look down at her. “You never tried that move on anyone else, did you? After that?” “You cured me of that particular move,” I say. I laugh because it’s funny now. It wasn’t nearly as funny then. It fucking hurt. “Was it love at first sight?” her mom asks. I look down into Emily’s eyes. I was intrigued by her the moment I saw that tattoo she wanted. There was so much in that drawing that made me want to get to know her. But she wouldn’t let me. “It was almost instantaneous for me,” I admit. Trip jabs a finger toward his throat like he wants to make himself throw up, but I think I’m the only one who sees it. “It took me a little longer,” she says.

Okay, I’ll just go on to the next card.” He picks one up, pretending to read. “It says here, ‘Darling, is there life on Mars? Yes or no.’ ” Mack has gone back to thinking about the paintings. “I say no,” he says absently. “Hmmm,” says Quilty, putting the card down. “I think the answer is yes. Look at it this way: they’re sure there are ice crystals. And where there is ice, there is water. And where there is water, there is waterfront property. And where there is waterfront property, there are Jews!” He claps his hands and sinks back onto the acrylic quilting of the bedspread. “Where are you?” he asks finally, waving his arms out in the air. “I’m here,” says Mack. “I’m right here.” But he doesn’t move. “You’re here? Well, good. At least you’re not at my cousin Esther’s Martian lake house with her appalling husband, Howard. Though sometimes I wonder how they’re doing. How are they? They never come to visit. I frighten them so much.” He pauses. “Can I ask you a question?” “Okay.” “What do I look like?

Diana was photographed at Thorpe Park with her sons on the water slide. ‘Charles the Absent Royal Father’ was castigated in the Mail. In stark contrast to the way Charles was raised, Diana’s sons were surrounded by maternal affection, dressed informally, taken to mingle with the people, and introduced into Diana’s charity work. She was undoubtedly deeply attached to her children and determined that they should not be as removed from real life as other royal children had been. So was her husband, although you would not have known it from the press reports.

Thus, Paul establishes the exhortation for wifely submission, not simply as a cultural norm to uphold, but as an integral component of the Christian life. It is significant to observe that Paul uses the phrase “in the Lord” in verses 18 and 20, in connection with the instruction for wives to submit to their husbands and the instruction for children to obey their parents. But the phrase is absent in verse 22 where slaves are told to obey their earthly masters.282

lowered the finger she'd been gnawing and frowned. On the other hand, Robby had said things: about their absent father, about Dean's own youth spent shunted away in boarding schools, and about the endless stream of stepmothers. She could almost see why Dean behaved the way he did. He practically didn't have a choice. If no one had treated him with warmth, how could he know how to treat anyone else with warmth? She'd noticed his abruptness when he'd met them out on the patio the other evening. It had been as if he'd wanted to join in, but had no idea how. As if, maybe, he were shy. Kelly combed her hair back with one hand. Heck, maybe a part of 'her' Dean was inside there, trapped. With her hand in her hair, Kelly halted. She blinked at the colorful array of her clothes. Whoa! No. Stop. Maybe Dean had suffered a lonely childhood, maybe no one had ever showed him they cared. Maybe that made him wall himself away, in self-defense. But more likely he was just a cold fish. Slowly, she finished combing her hand through her hair. She had a habit of making up virtuous qualities in a man to support her attraction. She couldn't do that this time. She had to keep her eyes open, her judgment clear. She had to see the man for who he truly was, and not who she wished he would be. 'Her' Dean, trapped inside. Kelly shook her head at herself. Not likely. The real Dean was utterly self-contained, an island unto himself, and happy to be so. He wasn't needy. She'd see that crystal clear after spending five hours at the opera with him. She pursed her lips and reached out to toy with a cerise silk number. That's right. She could get rid of her ridiculously romantic vision of 'Dean' trapped inside of Dean by the end of the evening. She'd see that her husband

Her Journal Tonight, my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a nice restaurant for dinner. Conversation wasn’t flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he didn’t say much. I asked him what was wrong. He said, “Nothing.” I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said he wasn’t upset, that it had nothing to do with me, and not to worry about it. On the way home, I told him that I loved him. He smiled slightly and kept driving. When we got home, he just sat there quietly and watched TV. He continued to seem distant and absent. Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About fifteen minutes later he came to bed. But I still felt that he was distracted and his thoughts were somewhere else. He fell asleep. I don’t know what to do. His Journal Rough day. Boat wouldn’t start, can’t figure out why.

I’d never paused to understand what it must have been like for my mother to raise all those kids more or less on her own, with her own paralyzing bouts of depression and anxiety and a husband who often was absent, drunk, or out of control.

Because Carlota’s sin was to always love in quantities that were too great: a husband unable to love her back, a son she never knew, a country snatched from her, an absent family, a lover lost.

Philippa. You gave your husband a brevet to absent himself from his responsibilities. I have cancelled it.

Cort also points out, these ascetic institutions reflect the agnatic values prevailing in the wider social world: monks constitute the core of these entities, and nuns are attached to monks' lineages, just as women become attached to the families and lineages of their husbands by marriage.

And you,” I turned on my sister. “Are always – literally – up under your husband trying to make the baby you claimed you were waiting a year for. So who’s been absent?” “Damn, aggressive much?” Kensa laughed, exchanging an amused look with Des. “And I’m not always under my husband – sometimes I’m on top.” “And I’m still fucking your brother,

Our national epidemic of “missing fathers” is not simply a problem of single mothers struggling without a husband. It’s also that of intact two-parent homes in which the father is morally absent from his children’s lives.

Aubry’s successor, Enguerrand I, was a man of many scandals, obsessed by lust for women, according to Abbot Guibert (himself a victim of repressed sexuality, as revealed in his Confessions). Seized by a passion for Sybil, wife of a lord of Lorraine, Enguerrand succeeded, with the aid of a compliant Bishop of Laon who was his first cousin, in divorcing his first wife, Adèle de Marie, on charges of adultery. Afterward he married Sybil with the sanction of the Church while her husband was absent at war and while the lady herself was pregnant as the result of still a third liaison. She was said to be of dissolute morals.

Saverland v Newton (1837) Caroline Newton was indicted for assaulting Thomas Saverland and biting off his nose. The complainant, whose face bore incontestible evidence of the severe injury inflicted, the fleshy part of the left nostril being completely gone, stated that on the day after Christmas Day he was in a tap-room where were defendant and her sister. The sister laughingly observed that she had left her young man down at Birmingham, and had promised him no man should kiss her while absent. Complainant regarded this observation as a challenge, especially it being holiday time, and caught hold of her and kissed her. She took it in good part as joke, but defendant became angry, and desired she might have as little of that kind of fun as he pleased. Complainant told her if she was angry he would kiss her also and tried to do it. A scuffle ensued, and they both fell to the ground. After they got up complainant went and stood by the fire, and the defendant followed and struck at him. He again closed with her and tried to kiss her, and in the scuffle he was heard to cry out, She has got my nose in her mouth.” When they parted he was bleeding profusely from the nose, and a portion of it, which defendant had bitten off, she was seen to spit out of her month upon the ground. The defendant, a fat, middle-aged woman, treated the matter with great levity, and said he had no business to kiss her sister, or attempt to kiss her, in a public house; they were not such kind of people. If she wanted to be kissed, she had a husband to kiss her, and he was a much handsomer man than [complainant] ever was, even before he lost his nose. The Chairman told the jury that it mattered little which way their verdict went. If they found her guilty the court would not fine her more than 1s., as the prosecutor had brought the punishment on himself. The jury, without hesitation, acquitted her. The Chairman told the prosecutor he was sorry for the loss of his nose, but if he would play with cats, he must expect to get scratched. Turning to the jury, the Chairman afterwards said, “Gentlemen, my opinion is that if a man attempts to kiss a woman against her will, she has a right to bite his nose off if she has a fancy for so doing.” ”And eat it too,” added a learned gentleman at the bar. The case caused much laughter to all except the poor complainant.

We’re not going to rejoin the fleet. Not going to raise men on Mars. Not going to waste time wrangling with politicians. We’re going to Venus to find the Ash Lord and cut off his head.” “Now, that’s what I call diplomacy,” Sevro says. He laughs maniacally and jumps atop the table, boots shattering a coffee cup. “Who’s up for some blood?” He howls hideously, his old mania vibrating through the room. Min-Min shoots up from her seat and howls. And soon the room wails with the cacophony of two dozen maniacs pretending we do not feel the hollowness of the howl absent so many of our friends. As Sevro rages atop the table, I watch Victra motionless in her seat, her hand on her newest child, watching in horror as her husband pretends he’s young again. The doubt creeps in, and I feel so very old.

Melanie got home from the hospital the day before yesterday, but Noah had been absent. There was reason to smile, though. Not only was it Christmas Eve, but Linda’s husband had appeared yesterday as well. Linda told Melanie that Aaron was determined they would live in Indiana now, away from the control of his family. As

I blamed my absent husband for so many things, but I have come to see—life in general is to blame. Edward would have stayed home if there had been another way. I was too stubborn to recognize the truth. What will he say when I meet him at the depot? For that matter, what am I to say? Perhaps neither of us will need to speak. We will embrace and hopefully capture our hearts in our gaze, which will be enough.

Volumnia, who is attempting to infuse some of her own stalwart qualities into her daughter-in-law: If my son were my husband, I should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won honor than in the embracements of his bed where he would show most love. (1.3.2–5) Is it possible to imagine anything more perverse? Not only is Volumnia declaring that she prefers a warrior who is absent (and in mortal danger on the battlefield) to a husband who is present in her bed—this much could be chalked up to Roman heroic virtue—but the whole assertion rests on the premise of herself as her son’s husband. And this, let’s not forget, spoken to the individual who actually does share “his bed where he would show most love.” It renders by comparison rather colorless the son-husband comparison with which All’s Well begins. With the fate of Rome hanging in the balance, the husbandless mother of the hero/savior edges toward absurdity, as when Menenius, trying vainly to stage manage the hero’s role in making peace with the plebeians, is forced to say to him, “is this the promise you made your mother?” (3.3.87), which sounds to me like a laugh line delivered on the playground or something I heard in my head at a prepubescent age, not an exhortation to decisive political action in the Roman forum. But Shakespeare has woven, ominously (or so it appears to me), another thread into the fabric of Coriolanus’s Rome. With the ferocious mother-fatherlover rolled into one at the center of this particular Roman world, it seems as though perversity is on the loose everywhere. Nothing in the rulebook of epic heroism accords with Coriolanus’s rapturous reception of his ally Cominius, O, let me clip ye In arms as sound as when I wooed, in heart As merry as when our nuptial day was done. … (1.7.29–31)

Alice’s report, written with three other women, was published in Science in February 1974. Women were about a quarter of the society’s membership. They reported that they worked as many hours as the men did, published as many papers, stayed at their jobs the same length of time, and shared the same motivations—men and women alike worked because they needed the money and because they loved the work and the sense of professional accomplishment. Yet on measure after measure the women had lower status. They earned less than men with the same qualifications, with the most educated women suffering the widest wage gap. Women had more trouble finding jobs, it took them longer to become professors, and they were absent among department heads and other jobs in top administration (which paid more). Administrators sometimes argued that they paid men higher salaries because men were expected to support families, but the study found that men were paid more than women whether they had children or not. Women were less likely to be asked to speak or consult outside their institutions, to write a review or a chapter or serve on an editorial board—all signs of professional respect. The study belied the bold promises a decade earlier to women who had hoped to combine family and career. The married women with doctorates reported the most dissatisfaction of anyone in the survey. They were more likely than their married male peers to have been discouraged from pursuing advanced degrees, less likely to have role models, and more likely to mention “bias.” While most men in microbiology were married, less than half the women were. Most of the women had no children, but the opposite was true for men. Most women said they could move only if their husbands found good jobs; most of the men said they would move regardless of whether their wives found a job they liked. Not surprisingly, women were twice as likely as men to say that their life and career had not lived up to what they envisioned when they finished their training.