DI Ch 2: The female contingent

[tootsiemuppet]

Desolation Island discussion post for the women: Sophia, Diana and Louisa.

'I wish with all my heart I could make a clear-cut reply; but in all honesty I can give you no more than my impression. I think Mrs Wogan did impose upon her to a large extent; but Mrs Villiers is no fool, and a clandestine correspondence rarely assumes the form of foolscap

Comments

[tootsiemuppet]

Yes. *carves Diana's name in a bullet*

[tootsiemuppet]

She leaves with Johnson and sticks Stephen with the bill. I stand by my bullet carving.

[esteven]

Stephen needs to take the Jack Aubrey Leadership training course if he's even going to win Diana body as well as heart.
Ah, but only that part of the course that deals with leadership at sea, which as we know tends to show Jack at his best. On land he is not quite the leader, though he believes himself to be.

[ozfille]

But she does know how cruelly she has treated him. It is there in her farewell letter, saying she had used him abominably again and she must have felt some guilt as she told him she would not see him again and begs for his forgiveness while telling him she values his friendship. Nice little twist of the knife there.

Stephen must seem so very milktoast to her. She flees, Stephen is sad, pays her bill and trots off to Sir Joseph thinking it is all he deserves. That's what makes Stephen so sympathetic to us all, he doesn't have that awful ego like Johnston and Canning, whose male egos allow them to tell themselves that they deserve everything, power, money, a wife and a beautiful mistress on the side. This seems to override all else in their characters and in the end they treat Diana as badly as she treats Stephen. Also Stephen is in a bad way. This happens on top of his making a mistake while operating on a friend that caused his death, his battle with giving up laudanum and then the lapse with the loss of the papers in the hackney

[esteven]

Stephen is very much a desaster that has already happened. Diana must have been constantly (and irrationally) on Stephen's mind for him to make such momentuous mistakes like leaving the papers and attacking Sievewright as he did.

after her experience with Canning she should have been wary of Johnston
She still feels that she needs financial security more than emotional content.

[sidlj]

As an aside, I was glad to see that the papers had been recovered, still sealed. I was worried about them, as you know. :-)

[esteven]

Indeed,I was so relieved. The situation shows though that Sir Joseph is very much aware how Stephen has crumbled around the seams and has to send him off on a mission that looks like a "vacation"

[sidlj]

And all the while they are talking, Stephen is putting words and motives in Sir Joseph's head - that were presumably quite accurate!

[esteven]

*nods*
That is why, though he doesn't say anything about the whole situation, I take Stephen's "word" for making Sir Joseph's thoughts transparent to us.

[esteven]

Stephen must have suspected what was waiting for him, because I think that he pays the bill with Jack's money. And he knew how long the lodgings had been rented...

[esteven]

I think he does. This short interlude about the gallons of ass'milk proves to me that Diana has a good hand in spending money. And he probably knew the rough amount from his informer/s.

Unfortunately he thought that he would find her, bail her out and she would marry him.