Chapter: I have the misfortune of not being a fool. From a very early age I have
detected what those about me thought they hid from me. If I could have
been habitually imposed upon, instead of habitually discerning the
truth, I might have lived as smoothly as most fools do.

My childhood was passed with a grandmother; that is to say, with a lady
who represented that relative to me, and who took that title on herself.
She had no claim to it, but I--being to that extent a little fool--had
no suspicion of her. She had some children of her own family in her
house, and some children of other people. All girls; ten in number,
    including me. We all lived together and were educated together.

    I must have been about twelve years old when I began to see how
    determinedly those girls patronised me. I was told I was an orphan.
    There was no other orphan among us; and I perceived (here was the
            first disadvantage of not being a fool) that they conciliated me in an
    insolent pity, and in a sense of superiority. I did not set this down
    as a discovery, rashly. I tried them often. I could hardly make them
    quarrel with me. When I succeeded with any of them, they were sure to
    come after an hour or two, and begin a reconciliation. I tried them over
    and over again, and I never knew them wait for me to begin. They were
    always forgiving me, in their vanity and condescension. Little images of
    grown people!

    One of them was my chosen friend. I loved that stupid mite in a
    passionate way that she could no more deserve than I can remember
    without feeling ashamed of, though I was but a child. She had what they
    called an amiable temper, an affectionate temper. She could distribute,
    and did distribute pretty looks and smiles to every one among them. I
    believe there was not a soul in the place, except myself, who knew that
    she did it purposely to wound and gall me!

    Nevertheless, I so loved that unworthy girl that my life was made stormy
    by my fondness for her. I was constantly lectured and disgraced for what
    was called 'trying her;' in other words charging her with her little
    perfidy and throwing her into tears by showing her that I read her
    heart. However, I loved her faithfully; and one time I went home with
    her for the holidays.

    She was worse at home than she had been at school. She had a crowd of
    cousins and acquaintances, and we had dances at her house, and went out
    to dances at other houses, and, both at home and out, she tormented my
    love beyond endurance. Her plan was, to make them all fond of her--and
    so drive me wild with jealousy. To be familiar and endearing with them
    all--and so make me mad with envying them. When we were left alone in
    our bedroom at night, I would reproach her with my perfect knowledge of
    her baseness; and then she would cry and cry and say I was cruel, and
    then I would hold her in my arms till morning: loving her as much as
    ever, and often feeling as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold
    her in my arms and plunge to the bottom of a river--where I would still
    hold her after we were both dead.

    It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was an aunt
    who was not fond of me. I doubt if any of the family liked me much; but
    I never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound up in the one
    girl. The aunt was a young woman, and she had a serious way with her
    eyes of watching me. She was an audacious woman, and openly looked
    compassionately at me. After one of the nights that I have spoken of, I
    came down into a greenhouse before breakfast. Charlotte (the name of
            my false young friend) had gone down before me, and I heard this aunt
    speaking to her about me as I entered. I stopped where I was, among the
    leaves, and listened.

    The aunt said, 'Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death, and this
    must not continue.' I repeat the very words I heard.

    Now, what did she answer? Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing her to
    death, I who am keeping her on a rack and am the executioner, yet she
    tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she knows what
    I make her undergo?' No; my first memorable experience was true to
    what I knew her to be, and to all my experience. She began sobbing and
    weeping (to secure the aunt's sympathy to herself), and said, 'Dear
    aunt, she has an unhappy temper; other girls at school, besides I, try
    hard to make it better; we all try hard.'

    Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something noble
    instead of despicable and false, and kept up the infamous pretence by
    replying, 'But there are reasonable limits, my dear love, to everything,
    and I see that this poor miserable girl causes you more constant and
    useless distress than even so good an effort justifies.'

    The poor miserable girl came out of her concealment, as you may be
    prepared to hear, and said, 'Send me home.' I never said another word
    to either of them, or to any of them, but 'Send me home, or I will
    walk home alone, night and day!' When I got home, I told my supposed
    grandmother that, unless I was sent away to finish my education
    somewhere else before that girl came back, or before any one of them
    came back, I would burn my sight away by throwing myself into the fire,
    rather than I would endure to look at their plotting faces.

    I went among young women next, and I found them no better. Fair
    words and fair pretences; but I penetrated below those assertions of
    themselves and depreciations of me, and they were no better. Before
    I left them, I learned that I had no grandmother and no recognised
    relation. I carried the light of that information both into my past
    and into my future. It showed me many new occasions on which people
    triumphed over me, when they made a pretence of treating me with
    consideration, or doing me a service.

    A man of business had a small property in trust for me. I was to be
    a governess; I became a governess; and went into the family of a poor
    nobleman, where there were two daughters--little children, but the
    parents wished them to grow up, if possible, under one instructress. The
    mother was young and pretty. From the first, she made a show of behaving
    to me with great delicacy. I kept my resentment to myself; but I knew
    very well that it was her way of petting the knowledge that she was my
    Mistress, and might have behaved differently to her servant if it had
    been her fancy.

    I say I did not resent it, nor did I; but I showed her, by not
    gratifying her, that I understood her. When she pressed me to take wine,
    I took water. If there happened to be anything choice at table, she
    always sent it to me: but I always declined it, and ate of the rejected
    dishes. These disappointments of her patronage were a sharp retort, and
    made me feel independent.

    I liked the children. They were timid, but on the whole disposed to
    attach themselves to me. There was a nurse, however, in the house, a
    rosy-faced woman always making an obtrusive pretence of being gay and
    good-humoured, who had nursed them both, and who had secured their
    affections before I saw them. I could almost have settled down to my
    fate but for this woman. Her artful devices for keeping herself before
    the children in constant competition with me, might have blinded many
    in my place; but I saw through them from the first. On the pretext of
    arranging my rooms and waiting on me and taking care of my wardrobe (all
            of which she did busily), she was never absent. The most crafty of her
    many subtleties was her feint of seeking to make the children fonder of
    me. She would lead them to me and coax them to me. 'Come to good Miss
    Wade, come to dear Miss Wade, come to pretty Miss Wade. She loves you
    very much. Miss Wade is a clever lady, who has read heaps of books, and
    can tell you far better and more interesting stories than I know. Come
    and hear Miss Wade!' How could I engage their attentions, when my heart
    was burning against these ignorant designs? How could I wonder, when I
    saw their innocent faces shrinking away, and their arms twining round
    her neck, instead of mine? Then she would look up at me, shaking their
    curls from her face, and say, 'They'll come round soon, Miss Wade;
    they're very simple and loving, ma'am; don't be at all cast down about
    it, ma'am'--exulting over me!

    There was another thing the woman did. At times, when she saw that she
    had safely plunged me into a black despondent brooding by these means,
    she would call the attention of the children to it, and would show them
    the difference between herself and me. 'Hush! Poor Miss Wade is not
    well. Don't make a noise, my dears, her head aches. Come and comfort
    her. Come and ask her if she is better; come and ask her to lie down. I
    hope you have nothing on your mind, ma'am. Don't take on, ma'am, and be
    sorry!'

    It became intolerable. Her ladyship, my Mistress, coming in one day when
    I was alone, and at the height of feeling that I could support it no
    longer, I told her I must go. I could not bear the presence of that
    woman Dawes.

    'Miss Wade! Poor Dawes is devoted to you; would do anything for you!'

    I knew beforehand she would say so; I was quite prepared for it; I only
    answered, it was not for me to contradict my Mistress; I must go.

    'I hope, Miss Wade,' she returned, instantly assuming the tone of
    superiority she had always so thinly concealed, 'that nothing I have
    ever said or done since we have been together, has justified your use of
    that disagreeable word, "Mistress." It must have been wholly inadvertent
    on my part. Pray tell me what it is.'

    I replied that I had no complaint to make, either of my Mistress or to
    my Mistress; but I must go.

    She hesitated a moment, and then sat down beside me, and laid her hand
    on mine. As if that honour would obliterate any remembrance!

    'Miss Wade, I fear you are unhappy, through causes over which I have no
    influence.'

    I smiled, thinking of the experience the word awakened, and said, 'I
    have an unhappy temper, I suppose.'

    'I did not say that.'

    'It is an easy way of accounting for anything,' said I.

    'It may be; but I did not say so. What I wish to approach is something
    very different. My husband and I have exchanged some remarks upon the
    subject, when we have observed with pain that you have not been easy
    with us.'

    'Easy? Oh! You are such great people, my lady,' said I.

    'I am unfortunate in using a word which may convey a meaning--and
    evidently does--quite opposite to my intention.' (She had not expected
            my reply, and it shamed her.) 'I only mean, not happy with us. It is
    a difficult topic to enter on; but, from one young woman to another,
    perhaps--in short, we have been apprehensive that you may allow some
    family circumstances of which no one can be more innocent than yourself,
    to prey upon your spirits. If so, let us entreat you not to make them
    a cause of grief. My husband himself, as is well known, formerly had a
    very dear sister who was not in law his sister, but who was universally
    beloved and respected--'

    I saw directly that they had taken me in for the sake of the dead woman,
    whoever she was, and to have that boast of me and advantage of me; I
    saw, in the nurse's knowledge of it, an encouragement to goad me as
    she had done; and I saw, in the children's shrinking away, a vague
    impression, that I was not like other people. I left that house that
    night.

    After one or two short and very similar experiences, which are not to
    the present purpose, I entered another family where I had but one pupil:
    a girl of fifteen, who was the only daughter. The parents here were
    elderly people: people of station, and rich. A nephew whom they had
    brought up was a frequent visitor at the house, among many other
    visitors; and he began to pay me attention. I was resolute in repulsing
    him; for I had determined when I went there, that no one should pity me
    or condescend to me. But he wrote me a letter. It led to our being
    engaged to be married.

    He was a year younger than I, and young-looking even when that allowance
    was made. He was on absence from India, where he had a post that was
    soon to grow into a very good one. In six months we were to be married,
    and were to go to India. I was to stay in the house, and was to be
    married from the house. Nobody objected to any part of the plan.

    I cannot avoid saying he admired me; but, if I could, I would. Vanity
    has nothing to do with the declaration, for his admiration worried me.
    He took no pains to hide it; and caused me to feel among the rich people
    as if he had bought me for my looks, and made a show of his purchase to
    justify himself. They appraised me in their own minds, I saw, and were
    curious to ascertain what my full value was. I resolved that they
    should not know. I was immovable and silent before them; and would have
    suffered any one of them to kill me sooner than I would have laid myself
    out to bespeak their approval.

    He told me I did not do myself justice. I told him I did, and it was
    because I did and meant to do so to the last, that I would not stoop to
    propitiate any of them. He was concerned and even shocked, when I added
    that I wished he would not parade his attachment before them; but he
    said he would sacrifice even the honest impulses of his affection to my
    peace.

    Under that pretence he began to retort upon me. By the hour together, he
    would keep at a distance from me, talking to any one rather than to me.
    I have sat alone and unnoticed, half an evening, while he conversed with
    his young cousin, my pupil. I have seen all the while, in people's eyes,
    that they thought the two looked nearer on an equality than he and I.
    I have sat, divining their thoughts, until I have felt that his young
    appearance made me ridiculous, and have raged against myself for ever
    loving him.

    For I did love him once. Undeserving as he was, and little as he thought
    of all these agonies that it cost me--agonies which should have made him
    wholly and gratefully mine to his life's end--I loved him. I bore with
    his cousin's praising him to my face, and with her pretending to think
    that it pleased me, but full well knowing that it rankled in my breast;
    for his sake. While I have sat in his presence recalling all my slights
    and wrongs, and deliberating whether I should not fly from the house at
    once and never see him again--I have loved him.

    His aunt (my Mistress you will please to remember) deliberately,
    wilfully, added to my trials and vexations. It was her delight to
    expatiate on the style in which we were to live in India, and on the
    establishment we should keep, and the company we should entertain when
    he got his advancement. My pride rose against this barefaced way of
    pointing out the contrast my married life was to present to my then
    dependent and inferior position. I suppressed my indignation; but I
    showed her that her intention was not lost upon me, and I repaid her
    annoyance by affecting humility. What she described would surely be
    a great deal too much honour for me, I would tell her. I was afraid
    I might not be able to support so great a change. Think of a mere
    governess, her daughter's governess, coming to that high distinction! It
    made her uneasy, and made them all uneasy, when I answered in this way.
    They knew that I fully understood her.

    It was at the time when my troubles were at their highest, and when
    I was most incensed against my lover for his ingratitude in caring as
    little as he did for the innumerable distresses and mortifications I
    underwent on his account, that your dear friend, Mr Gowan, appeared
    at the house. He had been intimate there for a long time, but had been
    abroad. He understood the state of things at a glance, and he understood
    me.

    He was the first person I had ever seen in my life who had understood
    me. He was not in the house three times before I knew that he
    accompanied every movement of my mind. In his coldly easy way with all
    of them, and with me, and with the whole subject, I saw it clearly.
    In his light protestations of admiration of my future husband, in his
    enthusiasm regarding our engagement and our prospects, in his hopeful
    congratulations on our future wealth and his despondent references to
    his own poverty--all equally hollow, and jesting, and full of mockery--I
    saw it clearly. He made me feel more and more resentful, and more and
    more contemptible, by always presenting to me everything that surrounded
    me with some new hateful light upon it, while he pretended to exhibit
    it in its best aspect for my admiration and his own. He was like the
    dressed-up Death in the Dutch series; whatever figure he took upon his
    arm, whether it was youth or age, beauty or ugliness, whether he danced
    with it, sang with it, played with it, or prayed with it, he made it
    ghastly.

    You will understand, then, that when your dear friend complimented me,
    he really condoled with me; that when he soothed me under my vexations,
    he laid bare every smarting wound I had; that when he declared my
    'faithful swain' to be 'the most loving young fellow in the world, with
    the tenderest heart that ever beat,' he touched my old misgiving that
    I was made ridiculous. These were not great services, you may say. They
    were acceptable to me, because they echoed my own mind, and confirmed
    my own knowledge. I soon began to like the society of your dear friend
    better than any other.

    When I perceived (which I did, almost as soon) that jealousy was growing
    out of this, I liked this society still better. Had I not been subject
    to jealousy, and were the endurances to be all mine? No. Let him know
    what it was! I was delighted that he should know it; I was delighted
    that he should feel keenly, and I hoped he did. More than that. He was
    tame in comparison with Mr Gowan, who knew how to address me on equal
    terms, and how to anatomise the wretched people around us.

    This went on, until the aunt, my Mistress, took it upon herself to speak
    to me. It was scarcely worth alluding to; she knew I meant nothing; but
    she suggested from herself, knowing it was only necessary to suggest,
    that it might be better if I were a little less companionable with Mr
    Gowan.

    I asked her how she could answer for what I meant? She could always
    answer, she replied, for my meaning nothing wrong. I thanked her,
    but said I would prefer to answer for myself and to myself. Her other
    servants would probably be grateful for good characters, but I wanted
    none.

    Other conversation followed, and induced me to ask her how she knew that
    it was only necessary for her to make a suggestion to me, to have it
    obeyed? Did she presume on my birth, or on my hire? I was not bought,
    body and soul. She seemed to think that her distinguished nephew had
    gone into a slave-market and purchased a wife.

    It would probably have come, sooner or later, to the end to which it did
    come, but she brought it to its issue at once. She told me, with assumed
    commiseration, that I had an unhappy temper. On this repetition of the
    old wicked injury, I withheld no longer, but exposed to her all I had
    known of her and seen in her, and all I had undergone within myself
    since I had occupied the despicable position of being engaged to her
    nephew. I told her that Mr Gowan was the only relief I had had in my
    degradation; that I had borne it too long, and that I shook it off too
    late; but that I would see none of them more. And I never did.

    Your dear friend followed me to my retreat, and was very droll on the
    severance of the connection; though he was sorry, too, for the excellent
    people (in their way the best he had ever met), and deplored the
    necessity of breaking mere house-flies on the wheel. He protested before
    long, and far more truly than I then supposed, that he was not worth
    acceptance by a woman of such endowments, and such power of character;
    but--well, well--!

    Your dear friend amused me and amused himself as long as it suited
    his inclinations; and then reminded me that we were both people of the
    world, that we both understood mankind, that we both knew there was no
    such thing as romance, that we were both prepared for going different
    ways to seek our fortunes like people of sense, and that we both foresaw
    that whenever we encountered one another again we should meet as the
    best friends on earth. So he said, and I did not contradict him.

    It was not very long before I found that he was courting his present
    wife, and that she had been taken away to be out of his reach. I hated
    her then, quite as much as I hate her now; and naturally, therefore,
    could desire nothing better than that she should marry him. But I was
    restlessly curious to look at her--so curious that I felt it to be one
    of the few sources of entertainment left to me. I travelled a little:
    travelled until I found myself in her society, and in yours. Your dear
    friend, I think, was not known to you then, and had not given you any of
    those signal marks of his friendship which he has bestowed upon you.

    In that company I found a girl, in various circumstances of whose
    position there was a singular likeness to my own, and in whose character
    I was interested and pleased to see much of the rising against swollen
    patronage and selfishness, calling themselves kindness, protection,
    benevolence, and other fine names, which I have described as inherent in
    my nature. I often heard it said, too, that she had 'an unhappy temper.'
    Well understanding what was meant by the convenient phrase, and wanting
    a companion with a knowledge of what I knew, I thought I would try to
    release the girl from her bondage and sense of injustice. I have no
    occasion to relate that I succeeded.

    We have been together ever since, sharing my small means.

 OK, so get ready, folks - Miss Wade is a doozy and a half. It's actually hard to know how to even characterize what she is saying, so we'll let a bunch of this summary happen in her own words. For now, let's just begin at the beginning, like she does. She grows up with a woman she thinks is her grandma, in a boarding school with a bunch of other girls. The other girls are always super-nice to her because she's an orphan. She notices this and deliberately tries to pick fights, which they try to avoid. She takes their niceness as a deliberate condescending insult. Um, OK. There's one girl that is her BFF. But the girl is friends with everyone and Miss Wade takes it personally whenever this girl interacts with anyone else. One time she goes home with her for the holidays, where this weird, ambiguous thing happens: She tormented my love beyond endurance. Her plan was, to drive me wild with jealousy. When we were left alone in our bedroom at night, I would reproach her with my perfect knowledge of her baseness; and then she would cry and cry and say I was cruel, and then I would hold her in my arms till morning: loving her as much as ever, and often feeling as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold her in my arms and plunge to the bottom of a river--where I would still hold her after we were both dead. So, OK. Is this some kind of incipient homosexuality trying to come out? Is Miss Wade just really possessive? Plain-old crazy? It's hard to know. Keep some things in mind: back then, people were not described as being gay. Homosexuality wasn't an identity; it was just a sexual act. At the same time, there was a lot more PDA between women. Friends slept in the same bed together and wrote each other letters that are full of passionate declarations of love that to us sound totally romantic and sexual but were not seen that way at the time. There was just a lot more space to be expressive about different kinds of love, not just romantic love. Nowadays, a lot of smart people think Miss Wade is gay, and a lot of other smart people think she's just crazy. So... hard to know. In any case, Miss Wade kicks herself out of the girl's house when the girl doesn't defend her to an aunt. Miss Wade finds out that the woman she thought was grandma was no grandma at all, and that she has no info at all about who she is. She also learns about the trust fund Casby is keeping for her, and decides to become a governess. The first place she goes to work seems to have it all: a nice young mom, two nice little girls, and a warm, affectionate nursemaid. Everyone tries to be really nice to her. But here is how Miss Wade reads the situation: the mom is being nice on purpose to point out her power - after all, if she wanted to, she could be super-mean instead. The nursemaid is trying to teach the children to hate Miss Wade by pretending to like her. Or something. It's really insane. Finally Miss Wade snaps, tells off the nice mom, and leaves to go to governess situation #2. At the second place everything is even better. There, her student has a cousin Miss Wade's age, who falls madly in love with her and they get engaged. Awesome, right? No. Miss Wade claims that he is so into her looks that she feels like he's buying her. Also, whenever his mom talks about how nice their life together will be, Miss Wade thinks that this is meant to be an insult about her life now. At that point, she meets Gowan. Oh, Gowan! Gowan, who never thinks that anything is good or worthwhile or of value is the perfect person for Miss Wade. Everything he says sounds awesome to her. Again, in her own words: "He made me feel more and more resentful, and more and more contemptible, by always presenting to me everything that surrounded me with some new hateful light upon it, while he pretended to exhibit it in its best aspect for my admiration and his own" . Well, certainly sounds like a charmer - exactly the kind of guy to bring home to mom and dad. She takes up with Gowan, flaunting it in the face of her fiance. Finally, the fiance's mom speaks to her and the engagement is broken off. Miss Wade and Gowan have a relationship - pretty clearly a sexual one - for a little while. Then he dumps her and goes after Pet Meagles. Miss Wade then travels around a little bit and runs into Pet and Arthur. She then finds and rescues Tattycoram, a young woman who seems to have some of the same traits as Miss Wade.

