Sophie Gee

She's recently arrived in Sweden and she says, my child was sleeping with equal calmness.

It was a beautiful, calm summer evening.

Innocent and sweet as the closing flowers.

Some recollections attached to the idea of home mingled with reflections respecting the state of society I had been contemplating that evening made a teardrop on the rosy cheek I had just kissed.

and emotions that trembled on the brink of ecstasy and agony gave poignancy to my sensations.

and made me feel more alive than usual.

What are these imperious sympathies?

How frequently has melancholy and even misanthropy taken possession of me when the world has disgusted me and friends have proved unkind?

I have then considered myself as a particle broken off from the great mass of mankind.

I was alone till some involuntary sympathetic emotion, like the attraction of adhesion, made me feel that I was still a part of a mighty whole from which I could not sever myself.

After our coffee and milk, this is the next morning, after our coffee and milk for the mistress of the house had been roused long before us by her hospitality, my baggage was taken forward in a boat by my host because the carriage could not safely have been brought to the house.

And she then describes this quite treacherous journey that they go on.

It's this oscillation between her identity as a mother, as a caretaker.

She's a single mother looking after her baby, but also looking after the nurse who she's with.

And then this deep probing interest in the self, what causes one's emotions to come and go, and then the society around her.

She's such an extraordinary person.

She's an incredible woman.

I mean, I could go on.

I'll add two more details.

When she returned from that trip, she learned that Gilbert Imlay had abandoned her for some...