You’re tasked with writing a response to Virginia Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own. For the purposes of this assignment we will call you Mary Sue, Ebony, Robin – it doesn’t matter. You’re using a pseudonym to protect your identity. Anyway, y/n begins writing an essay in response to an essay, as is the usual way of things. Boring, of course. So boring. Your thoughts can’t mold to an essay, or, when they can, you feel like you haven’t stated them properly. You’ve sanded off the rough edges to make things more palatable. Everything fits in neat little lines.
What would make this all easier, of course, would be fiction.
Fiction is a distinct beast from an essay. Too wild, untamable, hard to corral. An essay isn’t prone to wandering off on its own. Fiction, though, meanders through all the thoughts that can be seen and not said and, through the shape of them, you can see the shadow of what would be obscured in bullet pointed lists.
This is true. Although it would be more true to say that fiction is dear to your heart because you like it better.
You’ve always been a voracious reader since you were a little girl, finding stories first with things you liked and then, when you ran out, even with things you didn’t, struggling to twist your mind this way and that to find the silver lining in it all. You read ahead, stealing books away from those who would stop you, reading the words by flashlight and the late afternoon sun. Novels, short stories, poetry, and, yes, essays – but you never liked The Essay. Too much of it stated as fact what was clearly opinion. Sometimes it was covering for uncertainty.
Fiction, though, embraced uncertainty. This, you think, might be the original problem with it. Uncertainty brings with it a poorly defined willingness to change, an assessment of the circumstances compared to those more ideal. Poetry can be said to reflect only what is and what already has been, if the poet is boring, and the reader is more boring still.
Fact and fiction are two sides of the same coin. This is, perhaps, why fanfiction is a horse of a different color – but you’re getting ahead of yourself.
You have become a journalist. Through your youth you explored the ins and outs of language so thoroughly your parents insisted you make money with your words. This, being easier said than done, led you to a formalized program full of people who wanted to skip the sentences and run straight to the prize. What did it matter what they report on as long as they report? Journalism has come to feel like an action instead of a voice.
Respectable, though. Your parents neatly frame your every byline. You’re not sure if they read the articles. You know some of their friends read the articles they insistently share around, because you’ve been confronted, on occasion. Someone wants to correct you or someone else needs to know if you’re really sure or someone else insists they could do it better, if they’d bothered. Some merely nod to you with a blank smile and tell you, nice job, good work, very respectable name you’ve made for yourself.
Which is the problem with essays. They present an argument, and an argument invites people to argue. You’ve never much liked arguing. You write op-eds when your boss is scrambling for content, the same way you’ve been tossed reviews, and recommendations, and sports statistics, as necessary. It doesn’t bother you as much as it does some of your coworkers. Journalism isn’t to you what you think it is to them.
That, of course, is the crux of the issue. You’re much more interested in imagining what journalism might be to them than writing any of your own. In fact you find yourself, even as you type, daydreaming characters like your coworkers, or unlike sometimes, and what brings them to the industry. You’d rather follow where they go each day than go yourself, and sometimes you need to bring them with you just to bother.
It wasn’t always this way. When you were young you had imaginary friends galore, but you had to grow out of them. You miss them, in your heart of hearts, quietly.
You’ve tried writing a novel. You tried so many times, you’re not even sure it’s the same novel anymore, The Ship of Theseus built out of words. You did think, for a while, the words were the problem. That you’d grown too used to the perfunctory stylings of reporting to craft a narrative that drew the reader down and held them by the throat. You’ve called it the Ship of Thesaurus since then. It’s not really funny anymore, but you’ve gotten used to it.
The problem is – and everyone you’ve ever asked assured you this was normal – it always seemed like someone else’s book. Not that you hadn’t had a hand in writing it, but that it was growing closer and closer to some novel you loved, a worn paperback that sits forever on the shelf by your bed in case your craving for its characters grows too strong.
They tell you, yes, of course, all writers feel a pale imitation of something greater. Yes, all writers feel their words are unoriginal, their stories more so. Yes, all writers struggle not to use ideas they’ve seen before lest they be punished for it and their writing stripped from them.
You don’t worry about any of those things.
If you’re honest, you think your novel might be better writing than some of your favorite books. Formative they might be, fascinating, fabulous, but the craft is not always superlative, and the stories don’t always complete the journey they intend. It’s easier, of course, to see the errors in the editing. But there are such fantastic ways you could edit the stories you love, not just to be more of what they are but more of what they aren’t.
Your problem is: you’d often rather write about someone else’s characters than your own. Your problem is you don’t bother to think of plots because it’s more interesting to riff on ones already set before you. Your problem is the worlds the stories inhabit capture your attention more than one you’d have to drag your feet through setting up.
Anyway, that’s not something you’d tell anyone, because at first they’d think you were saying all the things they assumed you were saying already. And, if they didn’t, you’d encounter the very problem you’ve been encountering since the beginning of it all.
There weren’t always novels. There wasn’t always anything, given time and the history of the universe and all of that, to be far too precise, but mostly that isn’t relevant to what you’re trying to say. What you mean is, even in times people think of as very much like now, not so distant that it’s hard to comprehend, there were no novels.
They were invented. How is a matter of debate. You’re not interested – well, you’ve been, from time to time, quite caught up in that debate, but it’s more interesting to dither about than solve, and so it isn’t relevant here, either.
What’s important is that they were hated. Hated might be too strong a word? Hated is how you’ve felt when the emotions were aimed at you, scolded and dissuaded and taken from the baubles just out of your reach, but it may not be quite what people meant when they said novels were frivolous and facile and for girls. The novel is now considered quite without question an art form, but that’s because humans are short and history is long.
In any case: fan fiction exists, but fan fact is not any sort of thing.
(You have discovered, in your search through the genre, that this is by no means true, and fan fact is something often hotly contested with as much passion as any other use of the word.)
You know of this thing, you’ve been asked by now to write no fewer than three articles on this thing, but you’ve never written this thing.
That’s how it looms in your mind: This Thing.
It’s a forbidden fruit, of a sort, except that it’s not entirely forbidden. You could do it, but what would people say? You’d have to do it in secret, behind locked doors, just waiting for someone to catch you out. Oh you wouldn’t get in trouble, not the way you might have pursuing the wrong sorts of hobbies in your room as a child, lectured until you did something more useful, something more saleable, something more… normal.
You’d have locked your room so many days, as a child, if you’d known this sort of thing was something even you could write. Novels might be more lucrative, but the qualifier is exceedingly inexact. Fiction doesn’t pay, these days – not that you’re not worried over fact by this point as well – but then passion never did. Or it might have, at some points, for some lucky people, but never everyone who had something stunning to say.
You could do This Thing. You could take the stories you loved as a child, the stories you loved as an adult, the stories your friends love, the stories you hated or they hated but that have nonetheless a seed of potential, the stories that meant nothing at all but you could still draw meaning out of. You could take them. You could mold them. You could draw them ever so slowly out into the shapes you knew they were always meant to be, even if you’re the only one who can see it, as long as you never told a soul.
One day, though. One day it will be as silly as questioning the novel, and who knows which words will ever break that spell?
You have to get your thoughts in order. You’ll write about Mary Sue – no. Mary Beton. It stands to reason, if you’re to talk about Virginia Woolf, that you’d have to get your bearings somewhere. Fiction can be edited, and you’ll start with Mary Beton. A struggling journalist… a struggling fiction writer. Not with publishing – Mary’s published several books already – but with the time and energy that she, like you, wants to devote to a pastime everyone thinks is pointless, shallow, a waste of time. Something real writers wouldn’t sink to because they can’t sell the movie rights. Even among her friends –
You begin to write.
Mary Beton has a secret. She’s a struggling writer. Oh, it’s not what you think; her books found a home faster than she thought they would, and she writes them fast enough that she can make ends meet, if only just. They’re not her passion, though. They’re sanitized love stories between a charming young man who’s been burned by romance in the past, and a naïve young woman still starry eyed about the possibilities, learning to come together. To kiss.
Mary doesn’t want to end at the kiss.
If she’s being honest, she doesn’t want the heroine to kiss the hero, either, she wants the heroine to kiss Chloe. That’s her awful secret: in every one of these books, whether fans notice it or not – and some delight in pointing out the homage – there’s a wise and helpful older woman, clearly based on Chloe.
She is Chloe. Mary doesn’t tell people that. She gets ideas in her head about Chloe, and she jots them down, and they’re always so good. It seems a shame to waste them, so she reworks them into little scenes that give her a thrill of joy – never as a main character, but always at some pivotal moment in the book where she gets stuck.
It works. It just also feels like it’s not enough. She wants to write a whole book, a whole series, she wants to be Mary Carmichael – only she doesn’t, really. Oh, she’d like to meet Mary Carmichael – and proceed to tell her nothing whatsoever about these stories – but she wouldn’t like to be her at all. Mary Carmichael has to be so staid, so, at best, flirtatious, but Mary knows exactly what it means if Chloe likes Olivia.
Mary knows what it’s like to be locked into a marriage that’s sweet but meaningless, some mindless mumbling over the same newspaper every morning, the same breakfast, the same pretty little table where the flowers no longer make her smile. They have children – Chloe and Olivia do, not Mary – and of course they want to do right by the little ones, so it’s no wonder they can’t upend everything and run off without their husbands.
Mary simply has no one to run off with. There was someone, once, when she was just a girl herself, and they ran through the meadows holding hands, but even that had chilled to mere acceptance by the time she found a proposal too reasonable to quickly refuse. That was nice at first, too. Mary writes about nice all the time.
Sometimes she’d rather write about passion.
It occurs to Mary that most of her friends have experiences they would call merely nice, or sweet, or lovely, and never terribly passionate, and the few who have had their deep passions regretted it almost immediately after, or sometimes even before. She doesn’t want Chloe and Olivia to regret it. She doesn’t really know where to start on all that, though.
The problem is, Mary is shy.
Well, the first and foremost problem is that Mary needs a pen name to write all of this under, but that one is easily solved, and then of course the secondary problem of having to write in a disguised way, different from her normal purple prose, because she doesn’t want anyone to connect these to her books. She isn’t trying to pad the word count each month, anyway – she’d be here too long to get her work done if she did – so maybe that will be enough? Mary pulls down a thesaurus and circles words she rarely uses, intending to weave them seamlessly into her works. That will throw everyone off. Hopefully.
So, of course, she returns to the problem of being shy.
When she first started writing, close to a year ago, Mary wrote the same things she would’ve written for any of her books. Chloe giving Olivia advice. Olivia giving Chloe advice, sometimes, too, or both of them granting their sage wisdom to another young woman who approached them about love or science or some great mystery yet to be revealed. They had an apprentice, in one of her stories. That one wasn’t well received. But people seem to enjoy their advice on love and husbands and children. People seem also to enjoy their calm, companionable chatter as they work their apothecary benches. People enjoy their friendship.
It didn’t seem enough. Mary wanted to delve deeper, so of course, she did – but she never shared that with any of her friends.
She loves the other fans so much; she loves their lists of facts and fictions, their proof of what is and opinions about what might be. People have assigned Chloe so many hobbies and Olivia such a colorful extended family that Mary almost forgets those aren’t in the books, not quite. Every now and then on reread a line will tickle her, and she’ll remember some grandiose story elaborating on that tiny scene.
Everyone loves the friendship, though. Even when they speak of love they have something short and sweet between a woman and her husband, just a snapshot of their happy little life, before, during, or after the adventure.
Chloe and Olivia, they go on adventures together.
Mary’s tried to write their adventures. She’s tried. But every time she gets to the rising action, Olivia clutches Chloe in fear. Every time she hits the golden ratio, Chloe catches Olivia up in a kiss that shocks them both. Even when she changes the words, the signs are there.
After hitting a roadblock like this, Mary attempts to toss the adventure. She writes books all the time that surround no mystery or accident at all, and this should be no different. They turn, though, into imitations of her own art, sometimes with a turn into the – well, anyway.
If Mary’s going to write a nice little romance, where Chloe and Olivia meet and are drawn together, where their husbands have both left independently, or perhaps never were – there’s a thought; Chloe and Olivia could simply have children by themselves, or with each other – she needs to find a way to change her voice. These stories can be like a Mary Beton tale, but they can’t be seen as something so close as to be evidence of anything.
The horrible thing is that Mary doesn’t want to write a soft and sweet and slow love story. Or, she does, but it’s missing all the parts she most wants to write. But Mary tried writing passionate kissing the other day and it sounded inane, and everything else – she’s read some, but the mechanics of getting the characters into bed, figuring out where and when to touch, and then convincing them to enjoy it… it’s too complicated. And if she could imagine the logistics, which seem painfully confusing even for two athletic women, she’d still have to lay it out on the page without repeating herself, without making everyone roll their eyes in boredom.
Boredom is the best case scenario, though. That’s what Mary fears. It’s all well and good to say some of those who love the way she portrays Chloe and Olivia’s friendship will come along for their romance, but not, perhaps, if it devolves into chapters of smut.
Even in the steamiest of her published books, the sex scenes are only light.
Someone might understand if they came across a romance. After all, a romance novelist sees love everywhere she looks, so is it any wonder that Mary might like to write about the love of characters she, like everyone reading her fanfic, very much does love? That would be embarrassing, but tolerable. She could explain it away in interview.
If she started writing nothing but hot and heavy, there would be no explaining that away. People would question her motives. People would question Mary’s sex life, let alone all of her characters in all of her books.
People might send cease and desist letters.
Mary Beton doesn’t think Mary Carmichael is that sort of person, but it’s never just one – there are agents and publishers and all sorts of people who think they’re looking out for this one or that one’s interests. They can take a story down even when hundreds of fans like it!
And that’s assuming it had any fans. Which is doesn’t, because she hasn’t shared it. Which she can’t, because she hasn’t written it. Which she won’t, because who knows if she can even convince anyone that Chloe and Olivia are in love?
No, it’s best if Mary starts slow, with a gently arcing romance, two close friends discovering some passion greater than their laboratory, one going, perhaps, to the other for advice on, well, perhaps her own stories of the romantic persuasion. Yes, that’s it! They have a shared love of Austen – at least, in the fandom they do – and could well be speaking in hypothetical terms about a novel of her own. Chloe could ask how Olivia might write some certain thing she thought of, and Olivia would, of course, being in love all this time though she doesn’t yet know it, oblige.
Mary Beton begins to write.
Chloe loves Jane Austen. She loves the way Olivia’s voice wraps around the words, the way that her hands stroke the spines of the books so lovingly, the smell of warm paper mixed with sun-soaked skin and the gentle florals of the perfume Olivia wears. She loves every teasing glance and weighted diction on words about romance and soft, rumbling laugh Olivia makes between paragraphs when something particularly catches her eye. Oh, to have that laugh aimed at her instead. Chloe loves Jane Austen.
She’s had in her mind a story for weeks now, and of course she’s no Jane Austen, but she thinks that Olivia might be intrigued all the same.
It’s a tricky proposition. People always say that scientists don’t make good artists, and of course they say women don’t always make good either of those, so she’s put aside her love of the craft for years. It isn’t as if she’s attempting to make a living off it all, or even planning to do so much of it besides one or two little things, and she’ll only show her friends. She has no plans to publish at all, much less throw aside her work and devote all of her time to words.
Some words, though, call to her. It was always this way. Since she was small, some words glowed in Chloe’s sight when she read them in an article, a story, even on a street sign. Some words sang when she heard them spoken. When Olivia speaks, more words ring out than ever did before, even ones that never used to ring, and she wonders – is it Olivia’s voice? Or is it something just as beautiful, some way she gifts even the most mundane of verbs and nouns with some kind of inner life, as if she knows the very origin of the word’s impact on the world, and strives to give it every due accolade, even when everyone else has forgotten.
Olivia is always so smart about books. Chloe sometimes feels as if her thoughts are dull and tasteless when it comes to art, like laundry bleached too long in the sun. She worries about this, because sometimes Chloe will stand to long next to laundry supposedly hanging out to dry, just so Olivia will accidentally catch her at it, and laugh gaily as they hang out their clothes together. It’s a time of bonding freer than their work, which is so exacting they go long silences without being able to listen to the other’s voice.
So some of it isn’t just being self-conscious about her writing. Some of it is Chloe wondering whether she has a point, in this kind of narrative, or if it’s all based on the kind of conjecture people have called her silly for testing against longstanding philosophy.
Chloe’s idea is thus: what if Jane had not been in love with Mr. Bingley all along? What if she had been in love with Georgiana? It might look the same to an outside viewer, a woman of good standing taking a charming husband, and yet preferring the company of other women, as many do even today – so she’s heard. In any case, perhaps they did not wed at the end of the story, but had some other arrangement. Or perhaps no one thought they were to wed, if some changes began earlier on, although she hasn’t yet penned any of those.
She hasn’t penned anything, really. It’s a series of notes jotted down, some discussion, and not a full story. Chloe’s not sure it’s fully developed as it is.
“Olivia,” Chloe says, as she pours the tea for both of them, “suppose I had an idea that I wanted to run past you?”
Olivia smiles that smile that fits right into the conservatory, that would never look fully contained if they weren’t surrounded by glazed glass. “Of course, my dear, any sort of idea at all. Is it about work? Perhaps some sort of party? Or –”
“I have a story,” Chloe manages to blurt out, blushing for reasons she’s sure would be easy to ascertain if she stopped, but if she stops she may never start again, “or, at least, I have an idea for a story, and I was wondering if I should write it!”
“I myself have never written stories,” Olivia explains to her, and then pulls a notebook from a low shelf behind them, one Chloe has never noticed before, though by the planters it holds it must have been there the whole time. “But I can give you my advice for poetry, which is thus: if you have an idea, write it down. Otherwise you’re sure to lose it – I know what you’re going to say, and, no, even if it’s the most amazing idea you’ve ever thought of, you will forget what you meant. But if you write it, then it’s always going to be there.”
“What if it’s bad,” Chloe asks, in a way that makes Olivia cover her mouth – in either a grin or a grimace – and gesture for Chloe to open up the notebook. It’s full of poetry, most short, some pages long. Some of it is – intense. It makes Chloe blush.
“You see?” Olivia says, stirring sugar into her tea, and then, when she doesn’t respond, Chloe’s as well. “Some of it is quite terrible, but others turn out to be hidden gems, once you’ve polished them a little bit. So you might as well try.”
“Should I?” Chloe asks, clutching the notebook to her, wishing this were the kind of thing she could take home and ponder late at night. “Only the story is about Jane Austen.”
“Well, lots of wonderful stories are about someone real, though the story isn’t,” Olivia begins, and then, at Chloe’s shake of the head, shakes her own, as if to rearrange her thoughts, an action that Chloe has to look away from every time she does it. “Well, then, if it’s about one of her stories, then I think there’s every reason you might be thinking about that.”
“And I can write it about her stories – well, I don’t plan to show anyone but you, and maybe a few others if you like it, so whether I have permission is moot – but I thought. Well. You love them so much. I wouldn’t want to do a disservice,” Chloe is almost whispering by the end of the sentence, and then lowers her voice even more as Olivia leans in to listen to the last of the words, her breath warm against Chloe’s eyelashes.
“Nonsense. No one expects you to be Jane Austen,” Olivia tells her, almost giggling, as if they’re schoolgirls sharing secrets in the halls, “so you’ll sound different. You’ll sound like yourself. That’s a much more important thing to be than anyone else. Especially if you’re only being yourself for fun – if you don’t enjoy being yourself, who will?”
“Well, it isn’t that,” says Chloe, almost offended, even though the only fiction she’s ever written was assignments for school. She trusts her own capabilities, mostly, and isn’t worried about any of that. “It’s just that it differs from the book.”
“I should hope so,” Olivia says, brow furrowed. Chloe can’t help but draw in a breath at that expression, too, though she’s sure she isn’t worried Olivia is upset with her. “Why would you write a book that’s already been written?”
“Well. Say you thought it was important what was written, and I was changing the fundamental nature of the work,” Chloe says, and pauses to reevaluate. Her fingernail clinks against delicately painted porcelain, and she finally dives in. “Suppose you think it fundamentally changes the characters – if Jane were to fall in love with Georgiana.”
“Jane!” Olivia says, “and Georgiana!”
Chloe waits a moment, while every expression she’s ever catalogued, and some she hasn’t yet, crosses Olivia’s face, some more than once.
“Well, I do understand Georgiana – if you had asked me, I would have said I thought, perhaps, myself – but I thought Jane was in love with Mr. Bingley!”
“Well, yes, but suppose she wasn’t.”
“Suppose she was in love with… with a woman?”
“Yes, but only a woman she knew well. They are quite good friends, eventually.”
“Do you suppose someone can love a woman and a man?”
“Perhaps not at the same time, but I think one, then the other, she might, and anyway,” here Chloe sputters into her tea, almost choking as she tries to down the drink in one go, despite the hefty serving of sugar in it, “in my version of the story, Mr. Bingley is only a good friend, who wishes his dear friend happiness. Both of his dear friends. Together, you see.”
“As well he should,” Olivia says, quite pleased, as Chloe tries not to redden in handing over her notes. Olivia makes general hums of approval, the way she does over a timetable that’s been set out very neatly. Chloe doesn’t bother to keep her smile to herself.
“I think,” says Chloe, who, after all, is only mostly confident in her writing skills, “I shouldn’t like to write anything too risqué, but I think an element of the racy might be called for, depending on what story I should write.”
“Well, I think it’s terribly sad – it is a romance, after all – if Mr. Bingley should be left all alone, assuming he still has interest in a wife,” Olivia says, tapping her chin, thoughtfully, as she mouths a variety of names, “I don’t suppose you could name her Mary? Are there too many Marys to make the name sound alright? I don’t usually name characters.”
“I don’t think there can be too many, not when you’d never say there were too many in real life,” says Chloe, who, after all, is childhood friends with at least three people by that name, and even recently met a new neighbor who introduced herself that way. “Yes, you’re right, I will have a new character, who stumbles upon their relationship, and agrees to hide it, all because she’s in love with Mr. Bingley.”
Chloe rifles through names in her minds eye, all of people she knows, and it’s so difficult to find one that sounds right, she eventually resorts to looking them up in the magazine – literary – which inspired her to write her own story in the first place. Seton. That’s lovely. It might not even be important, except that surely strangers would address her that way.
Yes, Chloe thinks, as Olivia bends over her notebook, pressed firmly against her arm and making Chloe far warmer than the small touch should allow, she will write this character who sees two friends in love and can’t help but feel her heart reach out to protect it, can’t help but meld that heart with someone else who vows to do the same.
Yes, Chloe thinks. This is the joy of love. She begins to write.
Mary Seton finds herself at once behind the curtain, heart thudding in her chest, as she avoids the view of someone she never thought to avoid the view of. Oh, of course she avoids view, as she can, being a lady’s maid, but, being Miss Georgiana’s lady’s maid, she never thought to avoid Georgiana herself until right this very moment. It’s disconcerting to her, to find herself in this position, with no ability to predict it. Indeed, it’s quite disconcerting to her to find out other information she never had a chance to predict, namely, that Georgiana’s proclivities include the embrace of other young women.
Mary’s fingertips press white against her lips, rising almost of their own volition, as she struggles to think on what she might do. It’s not quite enough to be nearly certain this ‘Jane’ woman is taking no advantage of her lady – although Georgiana did seem to be quite enjoying herself – when even her very reputation may be at risk.
There is, of course, the possibility that this is somehow Mary’s fault. She’d thought at first it wasn’t, but on further reflection, considered that her lack of conversation, that lack she so carefully cultivated to remain employable, might be the very root of Georgiana’s problems. It’s a point of pride that Mary starts no conversations, but only waits to be allowed to continue them, but Georgiana is remarkably shy, even for a woman who enjoys time to herself as much as Georgiana does.
Mary’s friends are quick to remind her that their ladies love to tell of news and scandal as the maids take charge of hair and clothes and bedding. Georgiana, conversely, often prefers silence during Mary’s methodical work. It seemed to be a preference Mary could learn to work within, only it now occurs to her that it might be exceedingly lonely for Georgiana. Given that the only abatement to her loneliness seems to be written on Miss Jane’s lips.
As if to appease her sudden and crushing guilt, Mary has the urge to think intently on all of Georgiana’s friends. That would be a well-practiced skill, not at all like this equally sudden interest in who else’s lips might abate anyone’s loneliness. Well, perhaps a somewhat practiced skill. Mary is not an entire stranger to gossip.
As it turns out, Mary’s catalog of Georgiana’s friends is smaller than she hoped. Almost to a visitor, they’ve been interested in Mr. Darcy rather than his sister, no matter the home or the neighbors, even as they visit yet another friend. Georgiana has had the pleasure of visits from two childhood friends, herself, although she gets along admirably with her brother’s companions, and especially their wives and sisters. Mary is entirely unsure whether she should mark them as friends, at this point, as she’s yet to see any of them visit Georgiana directly, but she certainly has neither seen them kissing Georgiana, and so it might be to no point at all.
So then this Jane might be taking advantage. Or she might not, as well.
Mary turns from the room in which Jane and Georgiana are pressed as close as God might wish them to cleave, only to meet the last set of eyes that she’d wish. Or the second last, she supposes, after the sudden reevaluation of what she’d thought she’d been encouraging her lady towards. Perhaps the third. Fourth, if one were to include Mr. Darcy, who isn’t in today. In any case she shouldn’t like to see Mr. Bingley, and almost flies clear into the air in shock. She whispers his name in fierce surprise, even as she follows his motions into the other room, where they might be free to speak.
“I worry you might be forming an ill opinion of a good friend. Mr. Darcy would be upset to know you had anything to say about his sister,” he says, with reserve. He stands across the table from Mary, the sister in question removed by several rooms, and yet both are ready to speak only in hushed tones, lest she hear. “If you agree never to mention this, you shall have any recommendation you should like when you leave this place, I’ll make certain of it.”
“This has happened before!” Mary doesn’t generally find her voice accusatory, and especially not to someone putting a roof over her head, but this is a day for finding new things. One of those being, of course, Jane kissing Georgiana. And another being, now, the woman or women before Jane, who must also have been kissing Georgiana, for her brother’s friend – however close a friend he might be – to have such a prompt response at hand. So then it might as well have been Georgiana kissing Jane, and if it’s only that, it’s none of Mary’s business and ought not to be any of Mr. Bingley’s either.
“She might seem stranger to some than even her brother, but I understand her joys and sorrows and would force no other life on her, nor would Darcy let me even if I wished to,” Mr. Bingley tells Mary, still caught in the midst of an argument he seems to be having with himself. Well! Mary is convinced many of his conversations might as well be with himself, and she’d avoid even more of them if he looked less compelling while having them. His passion tends to draw the eye to more than just his lips, though Mary has long wished the passion might be directed a little closer to her own person.
“You misunderstand me, sir,” Mary says, despite herself, perhaps with the deference she should have better sense than to show his station, “it’s no matter whether Georgiana is strange at all, as long as she’s true to herself.” The pretty words seem to stun the pretty man, giving Mary leave to escape, only just managing to forgo mention of her long time contribution to certain carefully printed, carefully circulated newsletters, which Mr. Bingley would be certain to find much stranger than either friend or sister, in any case.
It’s a relief to hurry her way out of the kitchen in which she’s found herself with the temporary housemate she typically avoids when he’s of a mind to notice other people are there, watching him. Georgiana is her responsibility, and she’ll look in on the miss, all the way back to the drawing room, which is quite suitably far away from anyone else. Mary stills her breath as she peeps in, noting only their flushed cheeks above satisfied smiles, though now they sit with hands demurely held. Perhaps nothing, then.
Mary retreats upstairs to find something to tidy in the bedroom, far away from anything she might witness or be confronted about witnessing.
This is, of course, the type of story Mary has heard before. She herself has written some others might consider illicit. No tale as dark as those one might consider men too frail to read, though perhaps some darker than one might like a boy to take to heart. Still, too convoluted for a woman’s feeble mind, some have remarked, thus the careful circulation of stories clearly not meant for those too worried minds. And some, not Mary’s but some, are of two women in love.
The idea isn’t entirely foreign. Mary didn’t understand them as they were, but she knew enough of love to recognize the impulse within herself, and tried to see those women as they might see each other, the way she might see Mr. Bingley, or indeed any other man, save for probably Mr. Darcy. Now it’s all too clear – Mary couldn’t see those characters’ expressions, but she can see Georgiana, and knows what it would take to paint such a smile across her lips, like a child in delight at a duck pond and her newfound friends. The expression is embarrassingly familiar, and suddenly Mary finds it not so much to understand, after all.
In any case Mr. Bingley is beside the matter at hand, and all of his nonsense most probably will come to nothing, and so she resolves to ignore it. It’s Mr. Darcy’s reaction that she must concern herself with, in any case.
Mary sets the thought aside, along with Georgiana’s jewelry box. She hasn’t thoroughly cleaned any of these in far too long, which might account for her lady wearing the same necklace for weeks now, which simply won’t do. Now that she has someone’s eye to catch, she would do better to wear her more impressive jewelry, to draw Jane’s gaze in a way she doesn’t realize until later is overly fascinated. If men are smitten, it stands to reason that women might also enjoy the form of – Mary ought to be able to talk about these. She once wrote a story that featured them prominently, and was proportionately congratulated.
The idea that flirtation might work well the same on men and women, and that the difference is simply in those talents one chooses to employ, surprises Mary in its simplicity. It might even solve a problem in a character whose only goal has been to frustrate her of late, a lady demure on the surface, and secretly deadly.
Mary’s works tend towards violence, violence and treachery. Unacceptable for the fairer sex, and yet, this is why the newsletters gain such wide circulation. And such secrecy.
It’s nothing but a moment’s fantasy that Mary hesitates, waiting to be caught in a compromising position, before she realizes why Mr. Bingley might be making his way up the stairs. It’s another moment’s daydream that presents her with an almost realized story, the kernel of something visceral catching her thoughts, and then abruptly dissipating. Mary concentrates on only the emotion of it, letting it set like a stain on her psyche, and then turns to confront the man who insists on becoming more than one sort of problem, especially if he’s about to drag her employer into the mire with him.
“I said I would say nothing to anyone, and I keep my word,” Mary tells him, abruptly, taking her leave so he can converse once again with himself if need be. She has no time to watch him practice his speeches at the moment. A story is curing, and she must wait for it to be ready to cook. She sets about avoiding his searches with more dedication than she’s ever employed in Georgiana’s own home.
Still, for all her avoidance, he must have mentioned something of the adventure to Georgiana. He must have, because as Mary is putting her to bed, she keeps passing over her the same strange sort of look she gets whenever she’s caught out being a writer, though she knows her stories are well hidden where her lady doesn’t go. Mary offers Georgiana a gentle smile, and receives one back, and she hopes this has communicated whatever Georgiana needed telling, as Mary has not a single idea about it. They part ways.
This is the second escape of the day, and the more enjoyable one. It’s the work of every evening to free herself, but Mary needs both time and space hidden from view to write her silly little stories, and there’s no place with both but nighttime. Come hell or high water, she will find her way to write, whether the idea is from her own life, or someone else’s, satire or Shakespeare. Mary has a soft spot for Shakespeare.
This she hides very well in what stories haunt her: she takes his characters and makes them cruel to one another, in sometimes sinister and sometimes bloodthirsty ways. It may be hard for some to see her joy, but for others, for those who share her newsletters with her, it’s only too obvious. They would never deride her for her words.
But for the first time since Mary discovered such a likeminded crowd to be able to revel in the same forms of fiction, she considers writing one Georgiana might like.
Mary isn’t liable to show Georgiana, in the end. Her pastime is still secret for good reason. And while her doubts that her lady will change the story to fit a soft and womanly magazine of good repute are most likely unfounded, Mary’s still uncertain Georgiana’s is the type of mind to be tempted by stories, at least of this ilk. Their worlds had seemed so unconnected despite their intersection that Mary had thought her own stories not ever smart nor staid nor speculative enough to be interesting to someone always knowledgeable of the goings on in the world, while Mary had only, well, fascinating garbage.
It has come to Mary’s attention that she was giving Georgiana far too much credit. As it happens, every one of them is just another silly person wrapped up in a fine bow, even if Georgiana’s is very fine indeed. It’s rather intriguing. It might just be that everyone in the world has their own imagined stories full of horrors and wonders and strange little surprises that they’ve never been allowed to read.
And so Mary has two problems: what to do with Georgiana, and what to do about her brother – well, if one disregards what to do about Mr. Bingley, who seems quite concerned over the two of them – and the same solution for both. The same solution she always comes to, when she pauses to think on a problem too long: she puts all her confusion into her words, and then jumbles them up until they’re a story instead of a question.
Suppose Romeo and Juliet were instead two women? They might be from opposing houses still, women who were destined to be anything but friends and eventual lovers, determined to rise above their family name and the misgivings of the church, to marry at last. What would Romeo do then? Not Romeo – the name will come to her.
The thought whirls round her head, coalescing at last: Shakespeare would never have written such a thing. Or, to write such a thing, Shakespeare must have a sister to strike just as deeply at his heart as Georgiana’s hurts strike at Mr. Darcy, according to Mr. Bingley’s overly cautious response. That protective impulse gives Mary the slightest thrill, her hand itching to record it, if only she can make out what it means. Let William Shakespeare have a sister, then. So many people did. One might never have heard of her at all, Mary thinks, with a frisson of delight, if there were some special reason to hide her.
Mary pauses in her scribbling. She thinks to call this sister Judith, and ponders for some moments on the name. Yes, Judith is suitable. She will be Judith Shakespeare, and she will be brilliant and lonely and fierce, and she will write exactly as sensually as her brother, but of strange and wild things that no one would believe. The story is firmly taking root, developing branches even as she underlines the name.
She, like Georgiana, will need women to fall in love with. Mary thinks she may have hit on the importance of the story. She’ll like many women to fall in love with, which is important above all, for a playwright like Judith Shakespeare, who has to warn her too sincere brother not to reveal her secrets in his plays.
Mary Seton begins to write.
Judith Shakespeare shakes her quill free from dark ink. Her brother’s letter sits unfolded, near, its creamy surface pleasant to the touch. It warms her heart to hear him so adamant that what she does is right, to hear him praise her love just as his own. And still, he never understands. They know him all, and too well, every one, when her own life is nothing more than clothes well pressed in actors’ trunks for when there’s need of pretty costuming to finish out the play. Her every treasure nothing but a prop.
They all know him and none of them know her, and she prefers they never wish to try. If she gives in and shows them all this play that awful inclination will arise.
She needn’t now be known, she needn’t ever. To know her would just hamper all her tries at love. The inn will run as smooth with lovers out of love as with their kiss, but Judith’s arms wrapped warm around her waist will surely tempt the innkeeper’s quick wrath. And if the love be false then she can leave, but if it still lives true she must resist.
She loves her brother dear, and loves his plays, but this is nothing to present upon the stage. She pens the note and signs it true at once.
A play is nothing new for Will to write; he loves the stage as Judith loves each word. He’s written plays to her since they were small and always did his best to make them clear: each time he cause her hurt through his own fault a new one would anon appear. The words that Judith ran between her teeth, biting to a polish every one, came dear to Will when he could barely speak, and so instead he showed her in his way. The genius slipped from someone else’s tongue, and so she understood him. This was fine.
He hasn’t stopped the practice but this time the play is so much longer than those pleas. It’s just the length of any on the stage, and Judith dislikes certain details in the art. Forgive him, certainly, and with her letter penned she almost has, but this will not reflect well on her life. Too much attention and without sufficient care – they’ll know it’s her if they ask or not.
The play is not exactly what she’d write. The way he understands is to the side, a long and winding path by open road, and Judith would have told him where it went, but he had left in sudden temperament. She’d hurt him, so he thought, that much was clear, and so in grief he tried to leave and think slow thoughts until insight appeared. His thoughts were always too large for his mouth, and Judith, when she couldn’t share her own, would try to help – she’d nod to him and let him sit and think. And soon he’d gain epiphany.
She liked the gesture so, but not the play – and nothing in the way it ran or crept – like looking far too close at her own life, but never seeing what had built it up. He’d run and said some hurtful things that night, when after supper they’d had much news to discuss, and she was angry then, but this? Too much. She wants to know her heart is plain to see, and everyone she loves loved just as much, but Will can’t teach the world what hurt him, or Judith will be a target for their wrath. They aren’t quite ready to hear so much of love, not yet.
Juliet is Judith. This is clear. She’s so much based on Judith as a girl. So young, and too naïve, and somewhat crass, but she’s clearly Judith when she was a lass. And Will has always loved her, now and then, and too much love is clear in what he writes. She’d never hide, and hiding keeps her safe. For now he’ll change the words to suit the world.
The Mary in the play is not her love – her Mary’s not her love, nor Mary neither; her name is Olivie and she’s a friend – but Will’s idea of love built just to speak such pretty words that Mary would not say. Or Olivie would not, but Mary might, and Mary might be someone else for Judith now to write.
She’d never write a play about herself. And yet, she can’t but think what it might be about. Her brother’s Mary and his Juliet – she might know better what their love would be once every obstacle was somehow met.
Her family never would and nor would hers, but she wants them in the play well loved. To let them run away with marriage vows, not tragedy as she feels doomed to live. She says, to him, to make her Romeo. To write him as with any other man. To talk of kings and wealth and politics instead. A different girl whose family dashed her dreams.
Still – Judith wouldn’t play it on the stage. She’d act instead with thoughts in her own mind, a story told each night while close to sleep. Something not her in too cold city air, but somewhere Mary’s love for her would keep. A strange and distant place, in untold years, when all her brother’s plays were long forgot. They wouldn’t be the Montagues and Capulets she knows he’ll write, they’d be some other lovers with some other names to cry.
A Carmichael, or else a Woolf, what matter? In times so far from now, when women are in love, there won’t be scandal in so much, and so they share their craft. Dear Juliet can act and without shame be free to call herself actrix to every friend. She’ll sing and dance and write for everyone, the troupe around her building out a stage. Like Will and Judith were, as children, keen to hammer every nail in every board, so too will all those friends of Juliet.
Mary? Mary might, in days so far and fair to her mind’s eye be someone she could not now comprehend. An education not for those with means but everyone who found a book could read, and her just one of many schooled thus. A pastime and so casually learned, she thinks they’d still appreciate the words.
So Judith readies now herself for bed, a puff of breath to silence candle’s light, her gaze into the cold and distant dark, a town itself asleep as one tonight. There’s no one out, cold as it is, though Judith yearns to walk. She’d catch a chill. So off to sleep, in warmth, in sheets so soft they thrill. No one will ever know what’s not performed.
She writes down nothing as her eyes drift closed. That play is much too close to William’s own. Her story needs a different space and voice, a way free of the anger she’d incite. Such jealousy from those who never write.
She’ll change the scene, and change the cast, and change the words they walk, and now it’s hers, to make them run, to make them sing and talk.
Judith starts to write.
Mary Carmichael ices her cake. It’s a present for Juliet. Juliet, of course, gives Mary stories, but it’s almost impossible for her to reciprocate, despite the fact that she makes her living with her pen. It’s one thing to write novels. It’s almost second nature to write novels. But it’s nothing at all the same to write the kinds of stories Juliet writes, the ones set in other people’s worlds with other people’s characters acting out other people’s plots.
Jealousy, that’s what Mary feels. It’s almost enough to bubble over and tinge the warmth that floods up from her toes and into her cheeks every time she reads one of Juliet’s stories. Even the ones that aren’t smutty at all.
It was almost incidental she learned what fanfic was at all. A surprise to her, because given all the stories Mary acted out with her toys as a child, it would’ve been right up her alley as she made her way into fiction, feeling out her own worlds and her own characters. Then again, Chloe and Olivia might never have existed if she’d gotten caught up in that. Instead, she’d have some wide ranging international group of friends who traded ideas on this or that book, this or that show. Mary knows for certain she’d have written hundreds of thousands – if not millions – more words, but she has no idea if any of it would’ve been publishable.
There’s that word, though. Publish.
Her parents have never had any problem with Mary dating women. They were a little stunned when she started up with girls back in school, but as an adult, they haven’t batted an eyelash. That doesn’t stop them from judging her taste in partners, and oh, do they judge Juliet. Mary was trying to say how cute it was that she ran into this fellow fan on some forum about Virginia Woolf, some tiny little fan forum so of course they would meet, but who would think they’d meet elsewhere, over and over again?
Then she had to explain fanfiction.
Then, in an effort to defend it, she had to show Juliet’s fanfic off.
Mary had thought it would work, at first. She thought it had worked when her parents first praised the story, pointing out all the same kinds of details they admired in her own, the ones they gave her notes on before she sent anything to her agent for keeps. Instead, they started to complain about Juliet wasting her talent.
It isn’t wasted at all, but Mary doesn’t know how to explain that. She doesn’t know how to explain it to herself, when she could be writing a short story to sell to a magazine and make her parents proud, and instead she stares at a blank page, wishing she could write.
It was easy enough to hate when she’d thought it was just people thinking they could write her own stories better than she could. Straight white men, she’d thought, the way her old agent was before she tossed him, always telling her this will sell and that won’t, not even seeing a story behind the numbers. She’d thought it was, but then she looked. And it wasn’t.
It was women like her, who couldn’t see themselves in the stories until they saw themselves in hers. It was little girls like she had been, looking to see all the ways they might grow up, trying it on like playing dressup. It was men, sometimes, yes, but men who related to the same nonwhiteness or the same queerness or the same something else she meant, even when she could never quite bring herself to put it on the page. And it was so many people who weren’t like her at all but loved her still, loved her characters and her worlds and her stories.
Some of them were, well. Bad. But anyway she’d told her publisher she wasn’t going to read any more of them anyway.
Still. The thought had dug its way deep into her head, deep enough that she couldn’t stop thinking. Of all the worlds, all the characters, all the stories that Mary loved… how many had other people loving them the way her books were loved? And if they did have them, was there any reason Mary shouldn’t read them.
Some of them weren’t the kind of quality her publisher would’ve accepted, either, but they tugged at her from underneath her skin in a way she couldn’t quite forget, even when trying to explain what wasn’t quite right about them. So she stopped trying. Mary started trying to figure out what was exactly right so the nagging feeling would go away, except that seemed to make it bite down harder.
That was when she found the most perfect story she’d ever read. It was short, not even five hundred words, and yet it was everything she’d ever wanted to hear about Mrs. Dalloway, everything she’d ever thought was missing when she looked and thought she’s just like me except. She didn’t know Juliet’s name, yet, of course. She didn’t really know anything about the woman, just that they liked the same book.
And, soon, that she was a good conversationalist.
Juliet got under Mary’s skin in a perfectly normal way, heat and breath and promise. They went on a date, with little umbrellas in the drinks and everything, and it was a gorgeous night and then they were too dizzy to kiss, so they waited. And then they kissed all whirlwind romance on the gorgeous bridge everyone showed up to with a whole camera crew to do their photos – weddings, proms, even graduation sometimes. Regardless, yes, she was baking for Juliet in the middle of the night, but that was normal. Expected, even, when she got deep into someone who was clearly falling for her too.
But the story… the story clawed at her eyes even when she was asleep. Begged her to write a sequel, a companion piece, a remix. She couldn’t help but bite her lip, freezing in the middle of penning the next draft of her newest novel, caught up in words and images that weren’t her own. Wondering desperately how to make them her own.
And yet, every time, Mary heard her parents’ exasperation: why waste time on something you’d never be able to sell?
Mary didn’t need to sell every story she wrote; she’d jotted down ideas every now and then that would never work unless she gathered enough for a collection. More, she wrote the occasional short story – and on several memorable occasions, limericks – for a friend’s birthday or anniversary or promotion or anything at all, stories that were only meant for them, stories she’d never share otherwise, unless they told her to. Implicitly, they did mean for her to gather them in collections, eventually. But she didn’t.
Still, there was always the knowledge that she could sell them, if she needed to.
And Juliet couldn’t. Oh, she could’ve polished them down to shiny nothing, scraped all the names out and pushed them just the same, if she were really desperate. Or she could bang out something else, probably, if her sudden bursts of inspiration while she should’ve been sleeping were any indication at all. But there wasn’t even much money in fiction, anyway, so what was all the fuss about any of that for in the first place?
In any case, Mary can bake a cake for the woman she loves with just a little extra effort, looking in her recipe book for the one she remembers being a hit every time. The story? The one she’s been trying to write for Juliet’s birthday since she learned the date? That she isn’t having any luck on, no matter how hard she tries.
It doesn’t have to be Mrs. Dalloway, even though that would be the most poignant to Mary. She’s very certain Juliet doesn’t quite understand the impact she had. But she’s written enough stories directly for Mary that she knows her tastes, and she’ll pick up on it if Mary half-asses it, so she can’t. She has to pick something perfect. Perfect, while she can’t even tell if she’s okay writing fanfic in the first place, her parents complaining in the back of her mind, Mary’s agent rolling her eyes at the thought.
She could write fanfic of her own books, but that seems a little self-involved. Also she hasn’t been able to bring herself to ask if Juliet has heard of them. Anyway.
Mary needs to write something. She needs to write something about Virginia Woolf. No. Virginia Wollstonecraft. If she can convince her muse that it’s an original character her story is about, maybe that’ll trick her into writing. Anyway, it can’t be too obvious. Ginny’s got to be the kind of character that Juliet would love. Maybe even that some version of Juliet would love inside the story? No, Mary doesn’t know how to write that kind of character, yet. She’s never done much based on her own life. She better not bite off that much this soon.
In any case, Ginny Wollstonecraft had better be some kind of fanfic genius, because Juliet will get a kick out of that. Not the love interest, not yet, but with the kind of sense of humor that can make her the matchmaker.
Matchmaker for characters, anyway. That’s always fun.
Ginny’s got to be concerned about the stories. Not just the cute, unobjectionable ones, but the one everyone else is trying to get rid of, even Mary’s own fans, sometimes. The gay ones, the violent ones, the ones that talk a little too in depth about the kind of hate everyone would rather pretend doesn’t exist. Also, for some reason, the huge amount of them about tentacles that Mary is a little bit frightened to explore. Thankfully, her own books have no tentacles.
Regardless, Mary has exactly the right idea for who Ginny is trying to ship together. It can be comedy, parody, just this end of saleable if she doesn’t think too hard, and she can trick her writer brain into doing what she wants with it. Ginny can be trying to make the code and the user interface kiss. Some kind of programmer.
Mary begins to write.
Ginny Wollstonecraft has to wonder if this, too, is yuri. She snorts. Not that it’s that much of a laughing matter, but, hey – when the website isn’t behaving, sometimes you have to imagine it as toxic yuri. Toxic something, anyway; she has no idea what the last person meant by this and they didn’t bother to leave a comment, so what the hell is she supposed to do with that anyway? She has a job to do! Ginny is supposed to keep this website up and running!
It’s not as bad as it was. Back when they were first coding it – god, Ginny remembers all of that. It was almost sensual, running her fingers through every line of code, trying to figure out if she’d understood what it meant enough. The dusty smell of used programming manuals bought cheap. Gritting her teeth through the righteous outrage of yet another fic abruptly deleted with no warning, no recourse, no space left to exist.
It was like this: they built their communities from the ground up. And then someone else tried to take them away. What was anyone going to do but build and build and rebuild?
So, yes, Ginny hates downtime, but it’s a hell of a sight better than what it might’ve been. What it still might be if certain assholish parties get their way, and not if Ginny has anything to say about it. She’ll take the fucked up with the fluff any day if it means the site keeps running, and, unfortunately she has to. On account of the code is fucked up. Again.
Ginny makes her way through it, slowly, like carding her fingers through her love interest’s hair. The way what all the users see just barely kisses the surface electrifies her senses. She remembers not knowing. She remembers learning, the way it was like a lightning strike through her palms and she built a world into being, ready for everyone to, whatever, impregnate it with filth and awesomeness.
They just need two things to keep operating, that’s what Ginny told everyone up front, what she tells everyone now: the server space, and the operating costs. There’s more than that in practice, of course, but the basics are simple. They need somewhere to call their own, and they need to maintain the freedom to keep it that way. It’s easy, once you get the hang of it, like some long haired femme waving her hands awkwardly as she tries to figure out how to interact with the hot nerd writer who kisses her.
It’s easy to see from the inside. All too easy to remember what it was like from the inside, losing fics and friends left and right as this and that and someone were deleted. One day a vibrant community saying the funniest things, and the next silence, trying to track down everyone you remember and all of them panicking without even those posts to comfort them about it. Assholes trying to defend it. Corporations trying to defend it.
Difficult to even make yuri analogies about selling ad space, honestly.
Ginny wishes she could explain it, she really does. The desire to create that goes deeper than just a paycheck cashed. The way it feeds into community and community feeds into it. The way one person’s idea can build and build with everyone adding on just a little bit, like building a sand castle with everyone’s pails and shovels. She wishes she could explain why anyone would need that space and what they would need it for, and all the boundaries that seem so clear to companies being, actually, murky as hell.
How much it hurts, to put a price tag on everything.
She’s never been good at that kind of thing. Ginny writes fics, not persuasive essays. She has no idea how to go about illustrating anything at all, unless she wants to try to pen a memoir about her own life again. She failed miserably. Of course, last time she was a kid trying to write her Mary Sue into having godlike powers and a nose piercing, and now she’s come up with much more interesting powersets and absolutely would rather have her face firmly attached to her skull than a nose piercing, but, like, it’s still her life. There’s no recurring motifs or thematic throughlines. Hell, there’s not even a plot to work with, not really, and her characters all owe her money, to be honest, plus she’s pretty sure one of them stole her sweater.
Ginny needs a new sweater, not a new project.
Still, it’s something to think about. Trying to tell something from the perspective of how people get into fic, not what they get out of it. How they come to the conclusion that they, at the end of the day, need a fic of their own.
Virginia Wollstonecraft begins to write.