Ruby Ruggles

Daughter of Daniel Ruggles

Chapter XVIII
“Miss Ruby Ruggles, the granddaughter of old Daniel Ruggles, of Sheep’s Acre, in the parish of Sheepstone, close to Bungay, received the following letter from the hands of the rural post letter-carrier on that Sunday morning; -- ‘A friend will be somewhere near Sheepstone Birches between four and five o’clock on Sunday afternoon.’ There was not another word in the letter, but Miss Ruby Ruggles knew well from whom it came” (149). #Letters #Seduction #Proximity

“Though the writer had not dared to sign his name she knew well that it came from Sir Felix Carbury, -- the most beautiful gentleman she had ever set her eyes upon. Poor Ruby Ruggles ! Living down at Sheep’s Acre, on the Waveney, she had heard both too much and too little of the great world beyond her ken” (149). #Letters #Seduction #WomenReading

“But the Ruggles woman, -- especially the Ruggles young woman, -- is better educated, has higher aspirations and a brighter imagination, and is infinitely more cunning than the man. If she be good-looking and relieved from the presure of want, her thought soar into a world which is as unknown to her as heaven is to us, and in regard to which her longings are apt to be infinitely stronger than are ours for heaven. Her education has been much better than that of the man. She can read, whereas he can only spell words from a book. She can write a letter after her fashion, whereas he can barely spell words out on a paper. Her tongue is more glib, and her intellect sharper. But her ignorance as to the reality of things is much more gross than his. By such contact as he has with men in markets, in the streets of the towns he frequents, and even in the fields, he learns something unconsciously of the relative condition of his country-men, -- and, as to that which he does not learn, his imagination is obtuse. But the woman builds castles in the air, and wonders, and longs. To the young farmer the squire’s daughter is a superior being very much out of his way. To the farmer’s daughter the young squire is an Apollo, whome to look at is a pleasure, -- by whom to be looked at is a delight. The danger for the most part is soon over. The girl marries after her kind, and then husband and children put the matter at rest for ever” (150-151). #Literacy #WomenReading #Seduction

“and when he [ Felix ] sneaked over to her [ Ruby Ruggles ] a second and a third time, she thought more of his listless praise than ever she had thought of John Crumb ’s honest promises” (152). #Facility with Language #Seduction

Ruby complains that Felix promised to visit her but he never came. “‘But I wrote to you Ruby.’ ‘What’s letters? And the postman to know all as in ‘em for anything anybody knows, and grandfather to be almost sure to see ‘em. I don’t call letters no good at all, and I bet you won’t write ‘em any more’” (152). #Letters #Seduction #Possibility of Exposure

Ruby and Felix lying in the copse half a mile from Sheep’s Acre Farm: “She had her London lover beside her; and though in every word he spoke there was a tone of contempt, still he talked of love, and made her promises, and told her that she was pretty. He probably did not enjoy it much; he cared very little about her, and carried on the liaison simply because it was the proper sort of thing for a young man to do” (153). #Seduction #Dishonesty

“She [ Ruby ] felt that she could be content to sit there for ever and to listen to him. This was a realisation of those delights of life of which she had read in the thrice-thumbed old novels which she had gotten from the little circulating library in Bungay” (153). #Seduction #WomenReading