The Captive Reader

photo credit: Henry Grant (via here)

Dear Paul,

We were so very glad to get your cable with the news of your daughter.  I hope she will be very, very happy; and I hope she will be without fear.  I am quite sure that to be fearless is the first requisite for a woman; everything else that is good will grow naturally out of that, as a tree has leaves and fruit and grows tall and full provided its roots have a good hold of the ground.  Bring her up to be fearless and unintimidated by frowns, hints, and conventions, and then she will be full of mercy and grace and generosity.  It is fear that turns women sour, sly, and harsh to their neighbours.  It was Shakespeare’s Constance who said she was ‘a woman, naturally born to fears.’  Not naturally, I think; but hereditary; and so to be guarded against fear before all else.  (4 February 1949)

from The Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner