โShe grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, too unruly, too opinionated, too silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she sill need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married. She grows up , too, with the memory of what it meant to be properly loved, for what you are, not what you ought to be. There is just enough of this recollection alive, she hopes, to enable her to recognise it if she meets it again. And if she does, she wonโt hesitate. She will seize it with both hands, as a means of escape, a means of survival. She wonโt listen to the protestations of others, their objections, their reasoning. This will be her chance, her way through the narrow hole at the heart of the stone, and nothing will stand in her way.โ
โ Maggie OโFarrell, Hamnet
