{"id":67438,"date":"2026-07-04T15:54:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T19:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=67438"},"modified":"2026-07-04T15:54:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T19:54:51","slug":"thackeray-praised-womens-intellect-an-unfortunate-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=67438","title":{"rendered":"Thackeray praised women’s intellect. An unfortunate update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe I shouldn’t extract paragraphs from a novel I am only a quarter of the way through.<\/a> And I certainly should double check facts, especially the ones I’m staring directly at and thinking, “Wait, is this right?”<\/p>\n

So my mea culpa<\/em> is, by 1691 the Restoration was well past its silk-clad legs. Both restored Stuart kings, Charles II and his brother, James II*, were no longer around. Charles had died and James had been booted out of the country in 1688, when the so-called Glorious Revolution put The Oranges — Dutch William of Orange and his wife, Mary II, daughter of James II — on the throne of England.<\/p>\n

OK, that was my egregious historical error.<\/p>\n

As to Thackeray, his creation I lauded previously –the wonderfully evolved Rachel, Lady Castlewood — went on rollercoaster drop in her evolutionary progress, in a later chapter after her husband was killed in a duel (hope I’m not reuining the suspense for youse who haven’t yet read Henry Esmond<\/em>). She wrongfully blamed Henry, our eponymous good guy, for everything, turned against him totally and thoroughly wrecked him emotionally, never mind turning me, the reader, against her. Furiously. I was so mad and disappointed, I wanted to smack her.<\/p>\n

Maybe she’ll pull herself together in the near fictional future. I am not optimistic.<\/p>\n

*James II, a\/k\/a the Duke of York, was the reason my homeland, New Netherlands, became the English colony of New York, in 1664. So there’s a certain historical satisfaction in knowing the Dutch tossed the English out of England, a few decades after the English pushed the Dutch out of New Amsterdam.<\/p>\n

On this July 4, I note that we Americans began the process of tossing the English out of America.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe I shouldn’t extract paragraphs from a novel I am only a quarter of the way through. And I certainly should double check facts, especially the ones I’m staring directly at and thinking, “Wait, is this right?” So my mea … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9432,1175],"tags":[11903,11916,11915,11913,11859,11725,11914,6389,11905,11910,11911,11912,11216],"class_list":["post-67438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-the-facts-of-life","tag-henry-esmond","tag-charles-ii","tag-james-ii","tag-james-the-duke-of-york","tag-july-4-1776","tag-new-amsterdam","tag-new-netherlands","tag-new-york","tag-the-english-restoration","tag-the-glorious-revolution","tag-the-stuart-dynasty","tag-william-and-mary-of-orange","tag-william-makepeace-thackeray"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t