Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

15. CHAPTER XV: THE WIDOW'S SUITORS (continued)

'I don't see any "of course" in it,' said Madeline. 'The death of twenty husbands should not make me undergo such a penance. It is as much a relic of paganism as the sacrifice of a Hindu woman at the burning of her husband's body. If not so bloody, it is quite as barbarous, and quite as useless.'

'But you don't blame her for that,' said Bertie. 'She does it because it's the custom of the country. People would think ill of her if she didn't do it.'

'Exactly,' said Madeline. 'She is just one of those English nonentities who would tie her head up in a bag for three months every summer, if her mother and her grandmother had tied up their heads before her. It would never occur to her, to think whether there was any use in submitting to such a nuisance.'

'It's very hard, in a country like England, for a young woman to set herself in opposition to the prejudices of that sort,' said the prudent Charlotte.

'What you mean is, that it's very hard for a fool not to be a fool,' said Madeline.

Bertie Stanhope had so much knocked about the world from his earliest years, that he had not retained much respect for the gravity of English customs; but even to his mind an idea presented itself, that, perhaps in a wife, true British prejudice would not in the long run be less agreeable than Anglo-Italian freedom from restraint. He did not exactly say so, but he expressed the idea in another way.

'I fancy,' said he, 'that if I were to die, and then walk, I should think that my widow looked better in one of those caps than any other kind of head-dress.'

'Yes--and you'd fancy also that she could do nothing better than shut herself up and cry for you, or else burn herself. But she would think differently. She'd probably wear one of those horrid she-helmets, because she'd want the courage not to do so; but she'd wear it with a heart longing for the time when she might be allowed to throw it off. I hate such shallow false pretences. For my part, I would let the world say what it pleased, and show no grief if I felt none;--and perhaps not, if I did.'