South Riding

We're so busy resigning ourselves to the inevitable that we don't even ask if it is inevitable. We've got to have courage, to take our future into our hands. If the law is oppressive, we must change the law. If tradition is obstructive, we must break tradition. If the system is unjust, we must reform the system.

But questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence

Oh, lovely world,' thought Sarah, in love with life and all its varied richness.

Go therefore, and do that which is within you to do. Take no heed of gestures that beckon you aside. Ask of no man permission to perform.

To choose, to take, with clear judgement and open eyes; to count the cost and pay it; to regret nothing; to go forward, cutting losses, refusing to complain, accepting complete responsibility for their own decisions - this was the code which she attempted to impress upon the children who came under her influence - the code on which she set herself to act.

Lydia delighted her. The girl's roughness, her ability, her exuberance, were qualities desired by Sarah for her children. You could make something out of a girl like that. She had power.

But when you’re seventy you don’t always feel old. I know I don’t. There are times when you find yourself thinking of yourself as a girl. “Now the girl went downstairs.” “Now the girl put her hat on.” And then you look in the glass and there’s a stiff heavy lump of an elderly person facing you, your face all wrinkles and the life gone out of your limbs. But you can still feel young.

But of what use is prayer? When prayer becomes necessary, she thought ruefully, its futility is already proved.

She would not accept; she would not be resigned. She would not display a cheerful stoicism towards the misfortunes of other people.

her imagination was dominated by a confidence in salvation which Sarah found smugly complacent, a doctrine of atonement which Sarah thought barbaric, and a dream of heaven which Sarah thought materialistic and uncivilised.

But I'm not one to condemn you. Because for years I've thought far more of Carne than was good for me - or Jim. Mind you, I don't say I loved him the way you did. More as a son. I'm an old woman. But when you're seventy you don't always feel old. I know I don't. There are times when you find yourself thinking of yourself as a girl.

For she was clever. It had not been a lie then, that ecstasy which had visited her when she read A Midsummer Night's Dream on top of the railway coach last summer. It had meant something. She had understood something. She was drunk with an intoxicating wine of gladness.