Heart and conscience

Love this quote, another one purloined from Mystic Medusa's lovely website (see sidebar, astro stuff), this time from a courtesan of regency London: "Seriously, I have but a very confused idea of what virtue really is, or what it would be at. All the virtue I ever practised or desired to learn, was such as my heart and conscience dictated..."

Such a delicate silken thread to find and follow, that one - the dictates of heart and conscience (anyone seen those ads for melbourne? Girl in dress whimsically following a giant ball of red string? I imagine it maybe like this, but very thin filmy white spider silk instead). I like the notion of our internal moral compass, hard to follow though sometimes under the pressures of conforming, isn't it? There are sometimes many 'rights', confusing our magnetic north. I do lots of things that don't align with my values (hmmm... are they still values if you don't enact them - or maybe just reduced to nice ideas?) and sometimes I think this is valuable 'flexibility' and other times think is hypochrisy, laziness and inability to stay true to that quiet inner voice in the midst of the external demands being shouted from so many sources.

Oh, and the whole courtesan thing always sounds so exotic, don't you think? I can't say for sure that I would have been a Good Wife back in the day, perhaps preferring a brief flame of being in society with an acidic pen and arched brow to quiet servitude. I wonder how many early women writers were 'coutesans' - such good material, such flexible working hours, people to talk to about ideas and be charmingly opinionated to. Maybe. Or maybe just syphillus and smelly inbred Lords with dank britches and wandering interests. Maybe it just seems exotic compared to my very staid day ahead of translating documents fron English into English (don't even ask) - a task which requires patience and hopefulness, and extreme vigilince against despair and slipping into a 'this is so pointless arghghhhhh' rage. But very little chance of contracting venereal disease so I guess that's a plus.