[b]John Fowles from The French Lieutenant’s Woman
They looked down on her; and she looked up through them.[/b]
And that makes all the difference in the world sometimes.
His statement to himself should have been ‘I possess this now,therefore I am happy’ , instead of what it so Victorianly was: 'I cannot possess this forever, therefore I am sad.
And that makes all the difference in the world sometimes.
Yet this distance, all those abysses unbridged and then unbridgeable by radio, television, cheap travel and the rest, was not wholly bad. People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more. But I am a heretic, I think our ancestors’ isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. The world is only too literally too much with us now.
Maybe. Though just as readily maybe not.
Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good.
Lots and lots of pots like that for lots and lots of other things.
Sometimes I almost pity them. I think I have a freedom they cannot understand. No insult, no blame can touch me. Because I have set myself beyond the pale. I am nothing, I am hardly human any more. I am the French Lieutenant’s Whore.
On the other hand, what does that explain?
That’s the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery.
Is that really worse than the opposite?