Portraits Of A Marriage Quotes

Marriage isn't for the weak or lazy. It's work, and it should be. What would be the point otherwise?

There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.

Sadness keeps attempting to tie weights to her wrists and ankles, therefore she has to keep moving, she has to outpace it.

She has always had a secret liking for this part of the embroidery, the ‘wrong’ side, congested with knots, striations of silk and twists of thread. How much more interesting it is, with its frank display of the labour needed to attain the perfection of the finished piece.

The people who applaud the loudest, Lucrezia notes, are the ones who talked through the performance.

You need a plan,” she hears—or seems to hear—her old nurse, Sofia, say, from a place near her elbow. “To lose your temper is to lose the battle.

He says again that he will not hurt her, she must not be scared, he will not hurt her, he will not, he promises, the words whispered in his new rasping voice. And then he hurts her anyway. The pain is startling, and curious in its specificity

To lose your temper is to lose the battle.

You shall not look at me, she wants to say, you shall not see into me. I will not be yours. How dare you assess me and find me lacking?

She is here now, outside the walls of the villa, where the night has painted its own version of the valley, in bold indigo strokes; where the wind animates this mysterious shaded landscape, setting the trees in motion, flinging night birds up to the blue-black air, driving angry blots across the unreadable face of the firmament.

Love is giving someone the ability to hurt you but TRUSTING them not to

Does the light still slant into my chamber in the evening, just before it disappears below the city's roofs? Do you miss me? Even a little? Does anyone ever go and stand before my portrait?

This marriage had resulted from impulse: he had seen her on a high-flying swing at Tsarkoe Selo and her skirt, flared by the breeze, had exposed her ankles; he had proposed the following day.

She fought for the right to love, men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women. For this she was prepared to give up everything … How could she regret that the knowledge of it should now reach the ears of a new generation, one so infinitely more compassionate than her own?

The gown rustles and slides around her, speaking a glossolalia all of its own, the silk moving against the rougher nap of the underskirts, the bone supports of the bodice straining and squealing against their coverings, the cuffs scuffing and chafing the skin of her wrists, the stiffened collar hooking and nibbling at her nape, the hip supports creaking like the rigging of a ship. It is a symphony, an orchestra of fabrics, and Lucrezia would like to cover her ears, but she cannot.

How much more interesting it is, with its frank display of the labour needed to attain the perfection of the finished piece.

The animal was orange, burnished gold, fire made flesh; she was power and anger, she was vicious and exquisite;

To prove to [her friend, Swedish diplomat Count] Gyllenborg that she was not superficial, Catherine composed an essay about herself, "so that he would see whether I knew myself or not." The next day, she wrote and handed to Gyllenborg an essay titled 'Portrait of a Fifteen-Year-Old Philosopher.' He was impressed and returned it with a dozen pages of comments, mostly favorable. "I read his remarks again and again, many times [Catherine later recalled in her memoirs]. I impressed them on my consciousness and resolved to follow his advice. In addition, there was something else surprising: one day, while conversing with me, he allowed the following sentence to slip out: 'What a pity that you will marry! I wanted to find out what he meant, but he would not tell me.

As a flying seed will debauch a whole meadow with flowers, one kiss, one caress not even wished for, had spoiled her peace of mind, even her good health.

So firm did Nivea's determination become that she wrote in her diary that she would give up marriage in order to devote herself completely to the struggle for women's suffrage. She was not aware that such a sacrifice would not be necessary, and that she would marry a man for love who would back her up in her political goals.

During their last years it was as if they lay on one deathbed — the dying hands interlaced by habit, by hatred of each other and love of God, the dying mouths murmuring truths without pity and complaining still.

She had the strange and unaccustomed sensation of having been observed and, perhaps, understood. How odd it was that the person who seemed to comprehend her, to see into her very soul, should be a man who had glimpsed her only once.

She then leans over and thrusts the edge of the letter into the sconce burning on the wall of the stairwell. For a second or two, it seems the flame cannot believe its luck, refusing to consume the page. Then it comes to its senses, asserting its grasp, turning the edges of the paper black, shrivelling and devouring them.

He was a secretive man, who kept his own counsel. He was an ambitious man of humble origins, with colossal designs on the future. And it would always be advantageous not to be closely known, never to be transparent. Passing a farmer on a day, he would tip his hat and grin. Everybody knew him. Nobody knew him. He would play the fool, the clown, the melancholy poet dying for love, the bumpkin. He would take the world by stealth and not by storm. He would disarm enemies by his apparent naiveté, by seeming pleasantly harmless. He would go to such lengths in making fun of his own appearance that others felt obliged to defend it. -Daniel Mark Epstein.

She feels it; he feels it. They know it and they know each other’s thoughts and they sense each other’s actions and fears. She does not know why this is or where it might lead, but she knows it must remain hidden, and silent as the tongue in his head.

somewhat

It has been drummed into her by physicians and priests alike that the character of a child is determined by the mother’s thoughts at the moment of conception.

Words pressed themselves into her memory, like a shoe sole into soft mud, which would dry and solidify, the shoe print preserved for

The tigress didn’t so much pace as pour herself, as if her very essence was molten, simmering, like the ooze from a volcano.

Was there no hope? the tigress seemed to be asking her. Will I always remain here? Will I never return home?

Is it possible for a woman to be so unsettled in spirit that a child will have no hope of taking root within her?

This is a different man, surely, from the one who ordered Contrari's death. It cannot have been him. This is her husband, who loves her, or seems to; that was the ruler of Ferrara. They are the same man, they are different men, the same yet different.

Eleonora is a woman all too aware of her rarity and worth: she possesses not only a body able to produce a string of heirs, but also a beautiful face, with a forehead like carved ivory, eyes wide-set and deep brown, a mouth that looks well in both a smile and a pout. On top of all this, she has a quick and mercurial mind.

She paints for a long time, standing back from the tavola, leaning in close. She progresses from bowl to honey to the pleats and wrinkles in the cloth. She navigates her course through the arrangement of objects, how they interact with each other, the spaces and conversations between them, shrinking herself to the size of a beetle so that she may wander through the crannies between peaches, along the interlocking hexagons of the honeycomb. She feels her way around the corresponding painting, using her brushes like feet or antennae, seeking a route through the unfamiliar terrain of the items, hacking her way through the undergrowth of the work.

Because, says Emilia, there was a rumor about you. Someone swore that, when you were a little girl, he once saw you touch a tiger. And the tiger didn't harm you, it let you stroke it. It was always said that you had charmed the beast, like an enchantress. Impossible, of course, but— Not impossible, says Lucrezia, not at all.

Brak je samo za temperamentne stare djevice, iscijeđene prostituke i kraljevske parove.

Catherine, who knew little about sex, about erections and foreskins, and, certainly, nothing about phimosis, knew well what was expected of wives in a royal marriage.

I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think they ought to make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap.

If you're ever bored, take my advice and get married. Your wife, indeed, may bore you in that case, but you'll never bore yourself.

guards run after the cart, their hats in their

To ignore it is to drain it of its power.

You could criticise any marriage; it was the essence of a marriage to be criticism.

Kalbine bu şekilde girebileceğinin biri tarafından bilinmesi ya da sezilmiş olması hem dokunaklı hem de sinir bozucu bir durumdu.

Kocasının onu öldürmek istediği gerçeği yanında duran bir varlık, koltuğunun kolçağına konmuş kara tüylü alıcı bir kuş gibi.

Ostensibly, the Bushes seemed to be the antithesis of their predecessors, unencumbered by rumors of marital infidelity or financial improprieties.

I never understood rape until it happened to me. It was a concept- of savagery, of violence, of disrespect. I had read my share of Kate Millet and Susan Brownmiller but nothing prepared me for how to handle it. Within a marriage, fighting back has consequences. The man who rapes me is not a stranger who runs away. The man who rapes me is not the silhouette in the car park, he is not the masked assaulter, he is not the acquaintance who has spiked my drinks. He is someone who wakes up next to me. He is the husband for whom I make coffee the following morning. He is the husband who can shrug it away and tell me to stop imagining things. He is the husband who can blame his action on unbridled passion the next day, while I hobble from room to room. I begin to learn that there are no screams that are loud enough to make my husband stop. There are no scream that cannot be silenced by the shock of a tight slap. There is no organic defence that can protect against penetration. He covers himself with enough lubricant to slide part my resistance. My legs go limp. I come apart.

Lucrezia had not known it was possible to fall asleep--or, at least, a halfway version of it--on horseback. That you could be riding along, a leading rein stretching from your horse's bridle to the hand of a groomsman, mounted beside you, and your head could tilt forward, slowly, so slowly, and you would believe you were just resting your eyes for a moment, but then you would jerk it upright again and see that the sun had slipped down behind the rocks and the trees had clothed themselves in darkness and the night sky was a black bowl upturned over your head.

Deep in her soul—it was the deepest thing there—lay a belief that if a certain light should dawn she could give herself completely; but this image, on the whole, was too formidable to be attractive.

Sadness keeps attempting to tie weights to her wrists and ankles, therefore she has to keep moving, she has to outpace it. And so she walks, along one terrace then another, from one battlement to the next,

They girded their loins, they felt as if the quarrel had only begun. They felt indeed more married than ever, inasmuch as what marriage had mainly suggested to them was the unbroken opportunity to quarrel.

May I keep this?” It was not a question. He was already turning away, placing her miniature painting inside his leather book and tying the straps, so that the bird could never fly away again, even if it had lived.

lashes the beast had received, the bitter longing for the vaporous and humid canopy of jungle and the enticing green tunnels through its undergrowth that she alone commanded, the searing pain in her heart at the bars that now enclosed her.

People did not pick up the sexual connotations that often make even the most innocent expression of affection seem sexual to our sensibilities today. Perfectly respectable nineteenth-century women wrote to each other in terms like these: “[T]he expectation once more to see your face again, makes me feel hot and feverish.” They carved their initials into trees, set flowers in front of one another’s portraits, danced together, kissed, held hands, and endured intense jealousies over rivals or small slights.24

Violence is not something that advertises itself. It is not written on my face- he is too careful of that, of course, aiming his fists at my body. As long as a woman cannot speak, as long as those to whom she speaks do not listen, the violence is unending.

A Lucrezia nunca le han cortado el pelo desde el día en que nació: suelto, le llega a los tobillos, un bruñido río cobrizo que cae desde la cabeza hasta el suelo. Puede envolverse en él como si de un sudario se tratara. Puede esconder muchas cosas: suelto, a toda ella; recogido, flores, semillas e incluso pequeños animalillos. Cepillado, cobra vida, se transforma, se separa en zarcillos sinuosos cuyas puntas se levantan en el aire semejantes a hilos sueltos de telaraña. Cuando se lo peinan manos expertas, como ahora, se puede entretejer y sujetar en forma de corona o de halo.

This person was standing under Lavery’s portrait of Lady Walpole-Wilson, painted at the time of her marriage, in a white dress and blue sash, a picture he was examining with the air of one trying to fill in the seconds before introductions begin to take place, rather than on account of a deep interest in art.

Alfonso’ya bütün bunları anlatmak, kapılarla geçitlerin anahtarlarını vermek demek. O yüzden anlatmayacak. Oralara girmesine izin vermeyecek. Evliliğine kadar devam eden resim dersleri olmasa, iyileşeceğini ve hayatta kalabileceğini zannetmediğini söylemeden, görünmez bir yüzeyin altında gizli kalacak. Kimsenin görmesine, uzun uzun okumasına izin vermeden, bu sözleri kendi içinde saklayacak.

Tek bildiği, dünyada her şeyden çok sevdiği bir şeyden koparılıp alındığı, atılan her adımda aralarındaki mesafenin biraz daha arttığıydı. Bağırıp çağırıyor onu bırakmaları, geri dönmesine izin vermeleri için yalvarıp yakarıyordu ama kulak asan yoktu. Gözlerini son âna kadar kafesten ayırmadı. Onu taşıyan adamın omzu üstünden baktı durdu, karanlığın içinde gözlerini zorladı ve -sonrasında bundan hiç şüphe duymadı Lucrezia-kaplanın da ona son bir kez baktığını, sonra da çizgili kuyruğunu kırbaç gibi şaklatıp karanlık inine dönerek gözden kaybolduğunu gördü

Diana’s great-grandmother Frances Work, or Fanny, as she was known to her family, was an American, and perhaps that is why the Princess always felt such a great affinity for the land across the Atlantic. Fanny’s father began his career as a clerk in Ohio and ended up making millions as a financial whiz in Manhattan. A great patriot, he promised to disinherit any of his offspring who married Europeans. But Fanny, like Diana a strong-willed woman, crossed the Atlantic and married British aristocrat James Boothby Burke Roche, who became the third Baron Fermoy. When the marriage broke up, she returned to New York with twin sons and a daughter, and her indulgent father forgave her.

There is something quite . . . monstrous about the education of upper-class women. . . . All the world is agreed that they are to be brought up as ignorant as possible of erotic matters, and that one has to imbue their souls with a profound sense of shame in such matters. . . . They are supposed to have neither eyes nor ears, nor words, nor thoughts for this. . . . And then to be hurled as by a gruesome lightning bolt, into reality and knowledge, by marriage—precisely by the man they love and esteem most! To catch love and shame in a contradiction and to be forced to experience at the same time delight, surrender, duty, pity, terror. . . . Thus a psychic knot has been tied that may have no equal!

By the time Jefferson prepared to return to Virginia [from Paris], the lovely girl was 16. Here was a young woman who never could have emasculated him, never could have threatened him, never could have left him. She could not demand marriage from him, and make him break his promise to his late wife. A man could not marry his slave. Legally, she was required to do his bidding as long as she lived. Sally, for Jefferson, was the perfect solution. And what about Sally? How did she feel about him? We know frustratingly little about her as a person. Her thoughts and feelings, her hopes and disappointments. And As an enslaved woman, she leaves us no portraits, no letters, no diaries... We have no idea when the affair began. Did he set out immediately to seduce the 14-year-old? ... Our only source of information is her son...

Good women don't have bad things happen to them- in order to be raped, I need first to be made into this caricature of a bad woman. This male psycho-sexual logic looks at penetration as punishment. This is the rape that disciplines, the rape that penalizes me for the life I have presumably led. This is the rape that tames, the rape that puts me on the path of being a good wife. This is the rape whose aim is to inspire regret in me. This is the rape whose aim is to make me understand that my husband can do with my body as he pleases. This is rape as ownership. This rape contains rage against all the men who may have touched me, against all the men who touch me, against all the men who may have desired me. This nightly rape comes with a one-point agenda: she must derive no pleasure from sex. And yet, whenever he takes me against my will, he taunts me for enjoying it. In his ironclad logic: I am a whore, so I can be raped; I let myself be raped, so I am a whore.

One has to imagine the impact of Paddy on an old count from eastern Europe, barely able to live off his much-diminished lands and keep the roof on a house stocked with paintings and furniture that harked back to better days. His children might take a certain pride in their ancient lineage, but they also made it clear that the world had moved on and they planned to move with it. Then a scruffy young Englishman with a rucksack turns up on the doorstep, recommended by a friend. he is polite, cheerful, and cannot hear enough about the family history. He pores over the books and albums in the library, and asks a thousand questions about the princely rulers, dynastic marriages, wars and revolts and waves of migration that shaped this part of the world. He wants to hear about the family portraits too, and begs the Count to remember the songs the peasants used to sing when he was a child. Instead of feeling like a useless fragment of a broken empire, the Count is transformed. This young Englishman has made him realize that he is part of living history, a link in an unbroken chain going back to Charlemagne and beyond.

Walk out. Walk out. The recurrent voice that stays stuck in your throat. It is how you know you need to run. It is how you know that now is not the right time. How you also know there will never be a right time. How you know it is not the how of it that matters, but the when. How you know the world will laugh at you for a month-long marriage. Even that is not as cruel as the sight of the sad faces of your parents. Disgraced. You have given them nothing but disappointment. The defeat they will carry in their eyes for the rest of their days. Never again the old pride. Never again the easy trust. Never again will the way they say your name be the same. No more will they carry their dreams on your shoulders. Not just them and their heavy, gathered sorrows. You will have to live with one person all your life: you. The you wanting to leave today might be the you who thinks you should have stayed tomorrow. The fear that when you face yourself ten years from now, you will blame your haste, blame your hot blood, blame your sharp tongue, blame yourself for giving up so easily. The question within you, coming from your own sense of fairness: what if he was given the chance to rectify his mistakes, to change himself, to begin anew? The next question, coming up after the commercial break: were you willing to forgive him? And then of course, the inevitable, the unavoidable, absolutely vital: have you fought enough for what you believe in?

So what will you do?” Joseph, Lord Kesmore, asked his brothers-by-marriage. Westhaven glanced around and noted Their Graces were absent, and the ladies were gathered near the hearth on the opposite side of the large, comfortable family parlor. “Do? I wasn’t aware we were required to do anything besides eat and drink in quantities sufficient to tide us over until summer of next year,” Westhaven said. The Marquess of Deene patted his flat tummy. “Hear, hear. And make toasts. One must make holiday toasts.” St. Just shifted where he lounged against the mantel. “Make babies, you mean. My sister looks like she’s expecting a foal, not a Windham grandchild, Deene.” Gentle ribbing ensued, which Westhaven knew was meant to alleviate the worry in Deene’s eyes. “The first baby is the worst,” Westhaven said. “His Grace confirms this. Thereafter, one has a sense of what to expect, and one’s lady is less anxious over the whole business.” “One’s lady?” Lord Valentine scoffed. “You fool nobody, Westhaven, but Kesmore raises an excellent point. Every time I peek into the studio in search of my baroness, all I see is that Harrison and Jenny are painting or arguing.” “Arguing is good,” Kesmore informed a glass that did not contain tea. “Louisa and I argue a great deal.” Respectful silence ensued before the Earl of Hazelton spoke up. “Maggie and I argue quite a bit as well. I daresay the consequences of one of our rousing donnybrooks will show up in midsummer.” Toasting followed, during which Lord Valentine admitted congratulations were also in order regarding his baroness, and St. Just allowed he suspected his countess was similarly blessed, but waiting until after Christmas to make her announcement. When

Marriage is sacred. It was created to be the wedding portrait of Christ and His Bride hung over the blazing fireplace of judgment. A match made in Heaven, a contract signed in blood. In the bond of marriage, we are to stand at the altar of Sacrifice or we're not to stand at all.

Marriage isn’t for the weak or the lazy. It’s work, and it should be. What would be the point otherwise?

While I anticipate the moment to come home to my wife, she anticipates the moment I comes home to her. Marriage is a beautiful portrait, and Love is a beautiful background.

Now, the water is off more than it's on.

Back to the furniture. Sometime while the things were in storage someone helped themselves to 6 teaspoons and a tablespoon, 3 strings of Xmas tree lights and the metal ash tray we got from Raleigh cigarette coupons. I think it was a pretty low trick but we have no claim on things inside drawers because they weren’t listed on the contract.

there is much at stake in this debate—for the church, for marriages, and for families. The debate over gender roles has not diminished, and I do not see any end in sight. But we must not grow weary in defending the beautiful portrait of gender complementarity presented in the Bible. For by minimizing this aspect of Scripture, we put ourselves at great risk of looking more and more like the world, and we also miss out on many joys God intends for his people. May we rather submit ourselves to the teaching of God’s Word, no matter how countercultural it may be, and discover the joy of affirming and conforming to God’s plan for manhood and womanhood.

Robert Clive, one of the architects of British India, got married in St Mary’s Church. But that was much later. The very first marriage recorded in the register, on 4 November 1680, is that of Elihu Yale with Catherine Hynmer. Yale was the governor of the Fort from 1687 to 1692. It was during his tenure that the corporation for Madras and the post of the mayor were created, and the supreme court, which evolved over time into the present-day Madras high court, was set up. But despite an eventful stint, Yale was sacked because he used his position for private profit—he was engaged in an illegal diamond trade in Madras through an agent called Catherine Nicks. Yet he stayed on in Madras for seven more years, having packed off his wife to England. He lived in the same house with Mrs Nicks, fathering four children with her, and a Portuguese mistress called Hieronima de Paivia, who also bore him a son. He finally returned to London in 1699, an immensely wealthy man. As he busied himself spending the money he had made in India, a cash-starved school in the American colony of Connecticut requested him for a donation. The Yale family had lived in Connecticut for a long time before returning to England in 1652 when Elihu Yale was three years old. So when the college sought financial assistance, he shipped across nine bales of exquisite Indian textiles, 417 books and a portrait of King George I. The school kept the books and raised £562 from his other donations and, in gratitude, decided to rename itself after him. Thus was born Yale University, with the help of ill-gotten wealth amassed in Madras.

Marriage is sacred. It was created to be the wedding portrait of Christ and His Bride hung over the blazing fireplace of judgment. A match made in Heaven, a contract signed in blood.

Let these truths…be indelibly impressed on our Minds that we cannot be happy without being free, that we cannot be free without being secure in our property, that we cannot be secure in our property if without our consent others may as by right take it away. Abigail

And there’s no better tea anywhere, have you noticed? … I know the new generation of women don’t go to patisseries. They prefer espressos, places where you have to rush, where there are no comfortable chairs, where it costs forty fillér for one black coffee, where they can eat salad for lunch, that’s how it is now. But it’s not my world. What I want is refined patisseries like this, with such furniture, with crimson carpets, with their ancient countesses and princesses, their mirrored cupboards.

In this marriage in which I'm beaten, he is the poet. And one of his opening lines of verse reads: 'When I hit you, Comrade Lenin weeps.' I cry, he chronicles. The institution of marriage creates its own division of labour.

By this time, Abigail was signing herself “Diana,” using a fanciful classical name, as young women were wont to do in her time. This Diana, however, alive in Weymouth, was not the chaste virgin goddess of the hunt but eighteen years old and betrothed to a man who was given to huge passions. She saw only his greatness, recognized his genius, and was drawn to his brilliant talk as well as the energy that matched her own eagerness to engage with life.

A fascinating re-creation of the life and times of the dazzling nautch girl who became the celebrated Begam Samru after her marriage to a foreign military adventurer, General Reinhardt.

Adam Smith, who suggested that the “horror of poverty” lay not in hunger but in “obscurity.” Poor people suffer the indignity of being ignored. “To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable.” And if poor people cannot look to themselves, then they must look up to another person, whom they consider a hero. Their identification with heroes provided meaning in life. In a complicated set of discourses, John argued that all men, from the highest to the lowest ranks, depend upon titles to give meaning to their existence.

Suddenly I think that if I must retire from city life I might just as well live in France, where I would be happy, and I put the thought away as a private dream. - Elizabeth Pepys

You look as if you’ve just lost your best friend.” Eve took a place beside Jenny on this observation, which leavened Jenny’s sense of desolation with a spike of resentment. “With all my family around me, how could I possibly be in want of companionship?” Eve watched their mutual siblings stepping through a minuet while their brother Valentine held forth at the piano. “The same way I can long to dance while the minuet plays all around me.” Marriage had settled Eve, and impending motherhood had only honed her already formidable instincts. “You’re admiring your husband, Lady Deene, even when you can’t dance with him.” “He’s promised me a waltz, though Valentine will probably find one to play at the speed of a dirge.” She fell silent for a moment as the dancers one-two-three’d around the space created by the music room and an adjoining parlor. “You would make a wonderful mother, Jenny.” The worst pain was not in the words Eve offered, but the combination of pleading and pity with which she offered them. “Becoming a mother usually contemplates becoming a wife first, and I’ve no wish to wed some man for the sole purpose of bearing his babies.” Not the sole purpose… As the dancers twirled and smiled, it occurred to Jenny that Victor had made her promise not to stop painting, but he hadn’t said anything specific about eschewing motherhood. Had he? Another pause in the conversation, while the music played on. Eve, however, was notably tenacious, so Jenny waited for the next salvo, and Eve did not disappoint. “You look at Bernward the way I look at Deene, the way Maggie looks at Benjamin, the way—” “Louisa looks at Joseph, I suppose.” And Sophie at her baron too, of course. They needn’t start on how the Windham brothers regarded their respective wives. “Louisa’s gaze is a touch more voracious. I was going to say, the way Mama looks at Papa.” Ouch. Ouch, indeed. The duke and duchess turned down the room with the grace of a more elegant age, and yet, their gazes spoke volumes about the sheer pleasure of sharing a dance. Jenny stated the obvious as matter-of-factly as possible. “Their Graces dance beautifully.” Eve’s feet were propped on a hassock. She wiggled her toes in time with the music, the left and right foot partnering each other. “Bernward also dances quite well.” Elijah was dancing with Valentine’s lady, Ellen’s preferred partner being ensconced at the keyboard, as usual. “Bernward is dancing carefully, lest Valentine take exception.” Eve twitched her skirts. “Bernward is dancing with one eye on you, you ninnyhammer, and with the certain knowledge that all three of our brothers are waiting for him to come over here and get you to stand up with him. How many more times do you think you can check on the punch bowl between sets without Bernward taking insult?” Check

He would remember this too, remember Jenny Windham wrapping her arms around him as the wind picked up and the flurries danced down. He’d remember that when he might have argued her away from her course, when he might have offered her marriage and frequent trips to Paris, he’d instead held her and held her and held her. And then he’d let her go. ***

What can they be discussing?” Jenny asked nobody in particular. “A marriage proposal?” the duchess suggested. “I doubt it.” Her mother gave her a considering look from the sideboard. “If Bernward offered, Genevieve, would you choose Paris over him?” Her Grace was a pragmatic woman, also a mother who would cheerfully kill for her children or for her dear Percival. Her instincts were not to be discounted, ever. “I did.” “Oh, my dear, whatever could be more important than love?” And

Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1987); Joan E. Cashin, First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis’s Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006); Catherine Clinton, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2009); Daniel Mark Epstein, The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage (New York: Ballantine Books, 2008); Jennifer Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave (New York: Broadway Books, 2003); Ernest B. Furgurson, Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2004); Becky Rutberg, Mary Lincoln’s Dressmaker: Elizabeth Keckley’s Remarkable Rise from Slave to White House Confidante (New York: Walker and Company, 1995); Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Knopf, 1972); and John E.

—V. V. Ganeshananthan, author of Love Marriage “Compulsive reading. A deliciously timely, whip-smart buoyant dissection of men and women on the rise and the dynamics at play.” —Irenosen Okojie, author of Butterfly Fish “Beneath its high-octane, hi-tech surface, The Startup Wife is a funny, poignant, and supersmart story of ambition, independence, and love—a brilliant portrait of the times we live in.” —Tash Aw, author of Five Star Billionaire “Brilliant… A modern novel about love, startups, technology, ambition, and the future, all wrapped up in one. It’s very clever, but also subtle and very funny too.” —Emma Gannon, author of Olive

Origin of the Browning Family—Robert Browning's Grandfather—His position and Character—His first and second Marriage—Unkindness towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's Father—Alleged Infusion of West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's Grandmother—Existing Evidence against it—The Grandmother's Portrait.

I feel the heavy, funeral drumbeats of marriage as he forces sari up around my waist.

But I was stuck for a long time by myself at Abraham Lincoln's portrait, standing in the middle of the huge hall as people moved all around me with mostly children. I felt as if time had stopped as I watched Lincoln, facing him, while watching the woman’s back as she was looking out the window. I felt wronged, so much like Truman from the movie, standing there in the middle of the museum alone. I was wondering what would Abraham Lincoln do if he realized he was the slave in his own cotton fields, being robbed by evil thieves, nazis. I had taken numerous photos of Martina from behind, as well as silhouettes of her shadow. I remember standing there, watching as she stood in front of the window; it was almost as if she was admiring the view of the mountains from our new home, as I did take such pictures of her, with a very similar composition to that of the female depicted in the iconic Lincoln portrait looking outwards from the window. I hadn't realized how many photographs I snapped of Martina with her back turned towards me while we travelled to picturesque places. Fernanda and I walked side-by-side in utter silence, admiring painting after painting of Dali's, without exchanging a single word. Meanwhile, Luis and Martina had got lost somewhere in the museum. When I finally found her, she was taking pictures outside of the Rainy Cadillac. We both felt something was amiss without having to say it, as Fernanda knew things I didn't and vice versa. We couldn't bring ourselves to discuss it though, not because we lacked any legal authority between me and Martina, but because neither Fernanda or myself had much parental authority over the young lady. It felt like when our marriages and divorces had dissolved, it was almost as if our parenting didn't matter anymore. It was as if I were unwittingly part of a secret screenplay, like Jim Carrey's character in The Truman Show, living in a fabricated reality made solely for him. I was beginning to feel a strange nauseous feeling, as if someone was trying to force something surreal down my throat, as if I were living something not of this world, making me want to vomit onto the painted canvas of the personalised image crafted just for me. I couldn't help but wonder if Fernanda felt the same way, if she was aware of the magnitude of what was happening, or if, just like me, she was completely oblivious, occasionally getting flashes of truth or reality for a moment or two. I took some amazing photographs of her in Port Lligat in Dali's yard in the port, and in Cap Creus, but I'd rather not even try to describe them—they were almost like Dali's paintings which make all sense now. As if all the pieces are coming together. She was walking by the water and I was walking a bit further up on the same beach on pebbles, parallel to each other as we walked away from Dali's house in the port. I looked towards her and there were two boats flipped over on the two sides of my view. I told her: “Run, Bunny! Run!

I’d read Persuasion, about Anne Elliot, who, unmarried at twenty-seven, veers perilously close to an economically and socially unmoored fate before being saved from the indignity of spinsterhood by Captain Wentworth. I’d read about Hester Prynne and Miss Havisham and Edith Wharton’s maddening, doomed Lily Bart. These were not inspiring portraits. Collectively, they suggested that women who remained unmarried, whether by choice or by accident, were destined to wear red letters or spend their lives dancing in unused wedding dresses or overdose on chloral hydrate. These characters might not have wed, but their lack of husbands constrained and defined them, just as surely as marriage would have.

Nothing had happened, and yet, as if by magic, at a whistle from some fairy or demon, the city came alive, just like in those tales where the wicked wizard vanishes in a puff of smoke and the enchanted, apparently dead leap to their feet. The hands of the clock start moving round again, the clock ticks, the spring bubbles up. That war drifted away like a wicked demon: it tramped off westward. And now, whatever remained of the city, of society, sprang to life with such passion, fury, and sheer willpower, with such strength and stamina and cunning, it seemed nothing had happened.

Jackie remembered being awakened early one morning by Jack in Ashland, Wisconsin. Within moments Steve Smith, the husband of Jack’s sister Jean and one of Jack’s key campaign strategists, knocked at the door. “While they were talking about the news stories and things like that, I packed my bag and got dressed. Neither of us is very talkative so early in the morning, especially me. But I remember something in the car going to the airport in Ashland. I saw a crow and I told Jack we must see another crow, and I told him the jingle I learned as a little girl: ‘One crow sorrow, two crows joy, three crows a girl, four a boy.

She said quietly: 'Did you love your wife?' It was, he saw, a serious question, not a retaliation, and he gave it a serious and truthful answer. 'I convinced myself I did when I married. I willed myself into the appropriate feelings without knowing what the appropriate feelings were. I endowed her with qualities she didn't have and then despised her for not having them. Afterwards I might have learned to love her if I had thought more of her needs and less of my own.' He thought: portrait of a marriage. Perhaps most marriages, good and bad, could be summed up in four sentences.

There are times I almost believe that anything possible to be done should be done, not just because it’s good or makes sense, simply because it’s possible.

I have seen young boys in this village get married. They think it all bed, poor fellows. I see it quite different to this. I’m in no hurry at all. I must work. I mustn’t be worried or distracted. Not yet. I couldn’t spend time on my work if I was married.

evil day

Dryden’s original play, Marriage à la Mode, included the lines: “Why should a foolish marriage vow/ which long ago was made/ Oblige us to each other now/ When passion is decayed?