Ah! This is how I envision dear Adele. Edna most certainly is not the typical Victorian woman who marries blissfully and bears many children and rears them in perfect contentment. No, quite the opposite, but her dear friend, Adele certainly is the ideal of womanhood. What a remarkable woman, who handles everything with such grace! She is idolized by all, even Edna who is drawn to her. Adele is the perfect woman: beautiful, kind, delicate, maternal and endearing. She is frail and delicate, sickly like many well-to-do Victorian women with “conditions”. Adele is happy with her life, and wants nothing more than to be a doting wife and mother. She would give herself, body and soul for her children, but Edna will not. Edna is stronger than Adele in many ways. Physically, she is healthy and vivacious, and she is strong enough to say no to the defining forces in her life. Edna will not lose herself for her children. Her being is a most precious thing and the only thing that truly belongs to her, and for that it is sacred. Edna is not a model for qualities of an exceptional mother or wife. She makes mistakes, but she is a model for women to look to and see that they can change. They need not stay in the same dull and restrictive ideologies simply because it is the common thought. Edna is a modern woman, and though not perfect, that is what makes her human. She is so much more relatable than the idolized Adele, at least in my opinion. I know people will be shocked at my book; they may even reject it because Edna is so different from what women are supposed to be. I don’t care though. This is my story, and I want to see a woman like Edna, not someone perfect but someone that is real.




Photo courtesy of http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com