“My father was a soldier and my mother was a great mover. She once counted up how many places she had lived in during the first 25 years of her marriage and it came to 20.”
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I have deliberately left Sylvester and Julia's appearances to the reader's imagination.
Each marriage has to be judged separately, and we never know what's going on in another person's marriage.
That image of the countryside being a threatening place still exists. People continue to resist the challenge of learning about aspects of life they don't understand.
Women's courage is rather different from men's. The fact that women have to bring up children and look after husbands makes them braver at facing long-term issues, such as illness. Men are more immediately courageous. Lots of people are brave in battle.