"gardencourtship what'rethosewordscalled?"
"Ah, how little you know me!" Isabel said very gently.
"Don't taunt me with that; that I don't know you better makes me unhappy enough already; it's all my loss. But that's what I want, and it seems to me I'm taking the best way. If you'll be my wife, then I shall know you, and when I tell you all the good I think of you you'll not be able to say it's from ignorance."
"If you know me little I know you even less," said Isabel.
"You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on acquaintance? Ah, of course that's very possible. But think, to speak to you as I do, how determined I must be to try and give satisfaction!"
Reading this, I wanted to throw my book across the room in a fit of anger. Then pick it up and tear it apart right at the spine. How is this realism?? How does this in any way resemble what a real person would say, in the 1800s or today? It's reading crap like this all my life that's made me have unrealistic expectations for relationships. Seriously! Grr!
But I don't care! I don't care if they're unrealistic! It's possible. Reading this makes it possible, because if a guy can write this, a guy can feel this and act this, and apparently British guys are more romantic, or maybe I'd have to go back in time to find someone who'd propose to me without ever having kissed me.
Anyway. There's a rant for you.
I just called Henry James crap. Hehe. I'm vaguely ashamed. But not.
