In a world in which lives are shaped by unalterable choices and by accidental events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our private actions, but also in th...

Indeed, throughout the nineteenth century, women were encouraged to aspire to marriage. In The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits, Sarah Stickney Ellis, a best-selling author, maintained that women were "clothed in moral beauty," which was best applied to raising vir...