I was very much surprised at this change, and the more so as my vanity would rather have increased than cut down expenditure. I was fifteen years of age—in my sixteenth year—when I was married.
My astonishment greatly increased when I saw that I must give up what I had with so much trouble acquired. At my father's house we had to live with much refinement, learn to speak correctly. All I said was there applauded and made much of. Here I was not listened to, except to be contradicted and to be blamed. If I spoke well they said it was to read them a lesson. If any one came and a subject was under discussion, while my father used to make me speak, here, if I wished to express my opinion, they said it was to dispute, and they ignominiously silenced me, and from morning to night they chided me. They led my husband to do the same, and he was only too well disposed for it.
I should have a difficulty in writing these sort of things to you, which can not be done without wounding charity, if you had not forbidden me to omit anything, and if you had not thus absolutely commanded me to explain everything, and give all particulars. One thing I ask, before going further, which is, not to regard things from the side of the creature, for this would make persons appear more faulty than they were; for my mother-in-law was virtuous and my husband was religious and had no vice.
My mother-in-law conceived such a hostility to me that, in order to annoy me, she made me do the most humiliating things; for her temper was so extraordinary, from not having conquered it in her youth, that she could not live with any one. I was thus made the victim of her tempers.
Her whole occupation was continually to thwart me, and she inspired her son with the same sentiments.
They insisted that persons far beneath me should take precedence, in order to annoy me. My mother, who was very sensitive on the point of honor, could not endure this; and when she learned it from others—for I never said anything of it—she found fault with me, thinking I did it from not knowing how to maintain my rank, that I had no spirit, and a thousand other things of this kind.
I dared not tell how I was situated, but I was dying of vexation, and what increased it still more was the recollection of the persons who had sought me in marriage, the difference of their temper and their manner of acting, the love and esteem they had for me, and their gentleness and politeness: this was very hard for me to bear.
My mother-in-law incessantly spoke to me disparagingly of my father and my mother, and I never went to see them but I had to endure this disagreeable talk on my return. On the other hand, my mother complained of me that she did not see me often enough—she said I did not love her.
What increased still more my crosses was that my mother related to my mother-in-law the trouble I had given her in my childhood, so that the moment I spoke they reproached me with this, and told me I was a wicked character.
My husband wished me to remain all day in the room of my mother-in-law, without being allowed to go to my own apartment; I had not therefore a moment for seclusion or breathing a little.