Rather unexpectedly, I came to question the believability of Frederica. Her naivety started to irritate about halfway through – her behaviour and lack of circumspection, and when developments that inevitable from the outset did in fact develop, it was plain exasperating. I’m now puzzled about whether the reasons for my reaction are anachronistic; or whether the character herself lacks realism because constructed symbolically. The revelation that she’d been tracked by a private detective wouldn’t have come as a surprise even without the rather obvious indications that she was being followed.
On the other hand, the ending also made me retrospectively angry for Frederica’s treatment by the establishment. Perhaps the crux of the novel is the judge’s comment:
The higher education of women has in many ways, I have observed, been very hard upon both men and women. It has encouraged skills and raised expectations which society as it is at present constituted is incapable of of fulfilling or satisfying - – skills and expectations perhaps incompatible with the fulfilled life of wife and mother. (pp. 518-19).
I want to sort out exactly how this strand links to the other court case in the text.
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