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

[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 cab which must have shamed him in front of Sir Joseph. Stephen was certainly at a very low ebb and this was just the last blow to his totally depleted self, so I can't see that he could possibly be emotionally capable of doing anything so Jack-like as chasing her on a British man-of-war.

I think Diana is just a slow learner, after her experience with Canning she should have been wary of Johnston.

[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.