I am a woman writing about the experience of people who do unpaid or underpaid work, who adapt to the places they find themselves, and build the future. After all, our lives are the futures of our ancestors, whoever they were and wherever they lived. With or without children, can we be true to ourselves as we learn to love and be loved? Is this a woman’s perspective? You will have to tell me.
George was coming, they said. There were doorways and branches that would work as frames to enhance our looking at one another– man in the doorway, woman surrounded by plum blossoms. We would walk towards one another, the frames receding. I was ready to amend what Mrs. Starr taught about necessity and not pleasure keeping a man close. Pleasure might improve on necessity in a marriage. Maybe life with a husband didn’t have to be all one or the other. (The Compromise, ‘The Letter 1845″)
Florence Nightengale is the founder of modern nursing.