If she
isn't angry with the people who make her feel that way, I am angry for
her. I am angry with her brother too, for she is evidently very much
afraid of him, and this gives me some further insight into the subject.
She thinks everything of her brother, and thinks it natural that she
should be afraid of him, not only physically (for this _is_ natural, as
he is enormously tall and strong, and has very big fists), but morally
and intellectually. She seems unable, however, to take in any argument,
and she makes me realise what I have often heard--that if you are timid
nothing will reason you out of it.
Mr. Vane, also (the brother), seems to have the same prejudices, and when
I tell him, as I often think it right to do, that his sister is not his
subordinate, even if she does think so, but his equal, and, perhaps in
some respects his superior, and that if my brother, in Bangor, were to
treat me as he treates this poor young girl, who has not spirit enough to
see the question in its true light, there would be an indignation,
meeting of the citizens to protest against such an outrage to the
sanctity of womanhood--when I tell him all this, at breakfast or dinner,
he bursts out laughing so loud that all the plates clatter on the table.
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