This Brighter Prison

Author : Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer-Lytton
Publisher : Library of Alexandria
ISBN 13 : 1465610154
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (656 download)

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Download or read book Prisons & Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences written by Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer-Lytton and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of the experiences which I have to record are of so unusual a character that I think it will help to a better understanding on the part of my readers if I briefly outline the drift of my existence before I became aware of the women’s movement, and in touch with that section of it known as the “Militant Suffragettes.” My father had been dead fifteen years and I was thirty-nine years old in 1906, when my narrative begins. I lived with my mother in the country. Two sisters and two brothers had left the home when they were young—the sisters to marry, the brothers to train for and enter their professions. I assumed, as did all my friends and relations, that, being past the age when marriage was likely, I should always remain at home. In my early girlhood I had a yearning to take up music professionally; again, after father’s death, when unexpected financial misfortunes caused my mother great anxiety, I had longed to try my hand at journalism; and once more, a few years later, I had the same ambition. But these wishes, finding no favour, had in each case eventually to be repressed, and in 1906 I had neither equipment, training nor inclination for an independent life. I had been more or less of a chronic invalid through the greater part of my youth. An overmastering laziness and a fatalistic submission to events as they befell were guiding factors in my existence. I was passionately fond of animals and of children, music was a great delight to me; otherwise I was not given to intellectual pursuits. So far as I know, I was an average ordinary human being, except perhaps for an exaggerated dislike of society and of publicity in any form. I had many intimate friends, both men and women, and also children. Such mental training as I have known was chiefly due to intercourse with them. I owed to them, as well as to my mother and many members of my family, a happy life, in spite of considerable physical suffering.