What an Ugly Man

It was an absolutely superb evening. The house was lovely and majestic, decorated in
the latest style. The food was delicious, warm, satisfying in the utmost, the company of note, the
conversation stimulating. I looked radiant, a vision in virginal white. I was the loveliest girl in the
room, and everyone, from our host to the strange little governess who hid meekly behind the
curtains, was acutely aware of this fact and treated me with a deference I was not sure I entirely
deserved. Everything was as it should be, a young womans absolute dream.
And yet I was intensely unhappy.
I had not been invited to partake in stimulating discussion or to taste the fare of another
house. I had not come to be admired by the room--particularly because lord knows Mama would
have admired me just as much had we remained shut up at home. Mama would admire me as I
rode bareback into hell, hair matted and snapping in the wind, so long as I brought her what she
wanted.
Tonight was not about the present, but about the future. And from my perspective, the
future looked undeniably bleak.
And now here was a child, speaking to me as Id been taught to speak, deferring to me
just as my peers did. Children, dear reader, are curious things. We are taught it is a delight to be
possessed of them, yet when I in that instant contemplated the possibility of a house full of
children, a head full of nannies and governesses and childish laughter, afternoons full of sticky
hands and garbled phrases and shining curls slowly being molded into exactly what they were
always meant to be, exactly what I was, it felt as though the blood was suddenly draining from
my veins and leaving me as lifeless and unassuming as my dull little sister, standing to my right,
appeared. I imagined the child running, being told to stop, and never running again. I imagined
her never again exercising the audacious boldness which had compelled her to speak with me,
a woman she had never met. I imagined her, arrayed in the finest clothing, luxuriant silks and
satins, delicate lace, rich brocade, treated as the lady of the house, but turned out like a vagrant

as soon as a suitable offer was made for her future, her heart, and her soul. It was happening
already, and the child was glad of it, thinking this grooming a hallmark of maturity.
I admit that I sneered. I could not help myself.
Amy and Louisa fawned over the child, saving me from my shame. They were pretty
enough, and kind, but their minds were as dulled and blunt as Tedos, full of nothing but rustling
skirts and curled hair and jolly party games. They would live out their lives believing domestic
life to be the apex of feminine achievement, the preservation of their own beauty and class their
chief domain--the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to
adorn its prison. It was a pity; I overheard their father discussing politics and he seemed
possessed of at least half a brain. I should have liked to have spoken with him that night.
As it were, I was somewhat more occupied in entertaining my host--I must ascertain the
likelihood of his continued aversion to children.
Mr. Rochester, I thought you were not fond of children?
I am certainly not.
Nor am I.
Then why am I so afflicted this evening?
Then, what induced you to take charge of such a little doll as that? Where did you pick
her up?
The child is not a doll--a child is a threat.
I did not pick her up; she was left on my hands.
Dear God, let me never be left with such a burden as a child.
You should have sent her to school, said I.
We continued to discuss the matter, but I was far away, answering questions
mechanically, my rage barely submerged beneath a cool, placid surface. I was not truly there. I
could not be there. It was too ludicrously unjust, too cruel. Instead, I searched the recesses of
my mind for something with which to occupy myself, something unrelated to my hosts horrific

ugliness, or the subject of children, or governesses, or my certain, stable future. Music. That
was it. As we conversed, I played a tune in my head, analyzed its composition, its meaning, its
tone, thought about the way the sounds were wrung from the instruments I had heard them
from. I was far from the drawing-room. I was alone within a massive concert hall and all around
me was music, music that swirled and dipped around my form like water in a stream, music that
swelled and spilled out over the seats and washed over me in a frenzy of brass and wood and
reed. My senses danced, my mind jumped with glee, and I was at peace for the first time that
night.
My host spoke to me, called me his lily-flower, and the spell was broken, the melody
come undone, visions of maternity and wifehood and slow, creeping boredom taking its place
and the places of Wollstonecraft, Voltaire, Newton, and leaving me feeling empty and fragile as
the faces of the porcelain dolls I had been expected to dote upon. My host spoke to me once
more. I imagined his embrace; I nearly vomited.
Hurry, keep his attention. Think of the money. Think of the power. Think of the age
difference. Think of anything else.
I asked him to sing with me. He at least had a fine voice. Watching him prepare to sing
was repulsive. The dark eyes sunken in that ugly face twinkled with a demonic glee. Or was it a
feverish glow that made them shimmer so discomfitingly? The way he licked his chapped,
cracked lips before opening his mouth evoked memories of childhood illnesses, days when I
had woken with a mouth full of fire and a tongue so dry I could not swallow. What was it the
servants used to say? Starve a cold, feed a fever? This fever did appear ravenous. Predatory,
even; irrationally, for a moment I was sure that were I alone with him in that room, he would
devour me.
The only way I could keep myself from shuddering visibly was thinking of another, tall,
graceful, gorgeous--an equal in every arena. I thought of his gaze, the way his grey eyes swept
my face with their gentle intensity, tracing the tiny scar next to my right ear, uncovering the one

or two freckles on my nose I had lightened so well that they could be seen only under a certain
light, at a certain distance, with vision of a certain acuity. I thought of his hand on my arm, the
skin soft, the touch light. I thought of the ease with which I could speak with him, the way he
drew me out the way one unravels a ball of yarn until I spoke without guile, every thought in my
mind careening mercilessly, shamelessly around the room like a band of heathens in the jungle
as he caught each on his tongue as a child catches snowflakes, rewarding me with the
undisguised truth of his own unbridled thought.
But that was not to be my future. It was melting away now, as a snowflake would on
ones tongue, seared by the reproachful flames of reality. I put that memory aside and described
the opposite to my host and all in the room, saying that I hoped my match would never equal
myself in beauty, that I would marry a brute, a beast--to listen, one would think he and I perfectly
suited. I was lovely, he heinous, and yet to all the world, I had found it in my heart to excuse
this.
Mama beamed at the back of the room, jewels glinting darkly at her jowls. I had done it-learned to love the thing by which I was so repulsed.
My gown began to chafe at the waist and arms, and I felt the future tightening coldly
around my neck like a silver chain. I was his.