25
" Victoria's former governess Laddle perceptively noticed that the queen's grief would be worse because 'she has no friend to turn to'. 'The worst, far the worst,' Laddle continued, 'is yet to come - the numberless, incessant wishes to "ask the Prince," to "Send for the Prince", the never-failing joy, fresh every time, when he answered her call ... he greatest delight was in OBEYING him. "
― Lucy Worsley , Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
30
" Victoria's courtiers generally shared the views of her administrators and colonial staff in India, which were that Indians were decidedly inferior to Europeans. Victoria, however, perhaps having less cause to worry about her status being challenged, was less prone to this, 'There is no hatred to a brown skin - none,' she wrote, even in the wake of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. "
― Lucy Worsley , Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
32
" Many people envied her position as the winner of the Baby Race and the wearer of the crown. But when she discovered she was to be queen, Victoria already knew that it was the breaking, not the making, of her life. 'I cried much,' she said. Her mother had prepared her for the lonely royal trap in which bother of their lives would be lived, a trap that tightly clasped so many Victorian women but which squeezed and nipped at a queen perhaps most damagingly of all. 'You cannot escape your own feelings,' Victoire told Victoria, all those years ago, 'you cannot escape ... from the situation you are born in'. You cannot escape. It was true. You cannot escape. "
― Lucy Worsley , Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
38
" Victoria would in fact be the only married woman in the whole country who'd retain control over her own income and property. This was important. The reason Albert had nearly given up on the courtship was because it placed him "in a very ridiculous position. "Even now, everyone would know that he wasn't really the master in his own household. ... And then again, there was the distressing fact that she'd been the one to speak first. "Since the Queen did herself for a husband 'propose'," ran a London ballad, "the ladies will all do the same, I suppose: Their days of subserviency now will be past, For all will "speak first" as they always did last! "
― Lucy Worsley , Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
39
" Jane, in fact, mothered these girls, and her fiction reveals her belief that motherhood could be a social, not a biological function.4 Blood mothers may be ridiculous or ill-advised, like Mrs Bennet or Mrs Dashwood, but mothers in the form of mentors are often wise, generous, caring. Mrs Gardiner, her aunt, gives Lizzy Bennet better advice than Mrs Bennet does, while Emma Woodhouse has a fine surrogate in the shape of Mrs Weston. In this sense, Fanny and Anna were Jane’s own children. "
― Lucy Worsley , Jane Austen at Home