Vanity Fair

I should have read this years ago – I would be enjoying it much more. Fun and enjoyable, but disappointing, because I was planning to love it.

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‰ЫПThe best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don‰ЫЄt know how much they hide from us; how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential; how often those frank smiles, which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm ‰ЫУ I don‰ЫЄt mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide the dullness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it; we call this pretty treachery truth.‰Ыќ

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“There was a picture of the family over the mantelpiece, removed thither from the front room after Mrs. Osborne‰ЫЄs death ‰ЫУ George was on a pony, the elder sister holding him up a bunch of flowers; the younger led by her mother‰ЫЄs hand; all with red cheeks and large red mouths, simpering on each other in the approved family-portrait manner. The mother lay underground now, long since forgotten ‰ЫУ the sisters and brother had a hundred different interests of their own, and, familiar still, were utterly estranged from each other. Some few score of years afterwards, when all the parties represented are grown old, what bitter satire there is in those flaunting childish family portraits, with their farce of sentiment and smiling lies, and innocence so self-conscious and self-satisfied.”