bearing. She would rather stay at home and
avoid the rest of the world, leaving it illusory.

For at the Marsh life had indeed a certain freedom and
largeness. There was no fret about money, no mean little
precedence, nor care for what other people thought, because
neither Mrs. Brangwen nor Brangwen could be sensible of any
judgment passed on them from outside. Their lives were too
separate.

So Anna was only easy at home, where the common sense and the
supreme relation between her parents produced a freer standard
of being than she could find outside. Where, outside the Marsh,
could she find the tolerant dignity she had been brought up in?
Her parents stood undiminished and unaware of criticism. The
people she met outside seemed to begrudge her her very
existence. They seemed to want to belittle her also. She was
exceedingly reluctant to go amongst them. She depended upon her
mother and her father. And yet she wanted to go out.

At school, or in the world, she was usually at fault, she
felt usually that she ought to be slinking in disgrace. She
never felt quite sure, in herself, whether she were wrong, or
whether the others were wrong. She had not done her lessons:
well, she did not see any reason why she should do her
lessons, if she did not want to. Was there some occult reason
why she should? Were these people, schoolmistresses,
representatives of some mystic Right, some Higher Good? They
seemed to think so themselves. But she could not for her life
see why a woman should bully and insult her because she did not
know thirty lines of As You Like It. After all, what did
it matter if she knew them or not? Nothing could persuade her
that it was of the slightest importance. Because she despised
inwardly the coarsely working nature of the mistress. Therefore
she was always at outs with authority. From constant telling,
she came almost to believe in her own badness, her own intrinsic
inferiority. She felt that she ought always to be in a state of
slinking disgrace, if she fulfilled what was expected of her.
But she rebelled. She never really believed in her own badness.
At the bottom of her heart she despised the other people, who
carped and were loud over trifles. She despised them, and wanted
revenge on them. She hated them whilst they had power over
her.

Still she kept an ideal: a free, proud lady absolved from the
petty ties, existing beyond petty considerations. She would see
such ladies in pictures: Alexan