Dinner, Hobbes, and Ideal Wifehood

Today it was a rainy day, but not too dark. I was trotting about for several hours shopping (two trips), washing the dishes while Ge. dried them, sweeping the kitchen, setting the table, and cooking dinner with T. Dinner was a noodle casserole with ground beef, onions, tomatoes and gouda on top; to the ground beef we added plenty of herbs and spices (not curry, though, because T. didn't want it), with a most satisfying result. We had broccoli and tomato slices on the side, and stracciatella as well as chocolate-marzipan ice cream for dessert. (c:

Yesterday I began reading Hobbes's Leviathan. I'd have to be abysmally unintelligent if I didn't understand the first sentences of that book. It's most interesting, really, thinking about a country as a Body (Politick) -- also because it reminds me of the few sentences of Freud's Massenpsychologie that I've read. I suppose that the comparison holds even after our knowledge of physiology has advanced so much; a person is like a cell, and though few cells make direct contact with one another, they are interdependent. The danger of this way of thinking is probably that it invites the claim that the state is more important than the individual -- which, my personal dislike of the idea aside, has been responsible for a lot of damage.

But my uncle W. and cousin An. have come for a visit, so I should curtail this blog post. Later I plan on re-reading a most exciting online novel, St. Elmo (originally published 1867) I feel slightly guilty for reading it, because it is a novel and there are really silly parts, but the flamboyant prose, the barely intelligible philosophizings, the dramatic scenery and dialogue and plot, and the idealized characters -- all of the most unrealistic order -- provide excellent entertainment.

Here is the opening quotation of the book:

"Ah! The true rule is -- a true wife in her husband's house is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of the highest he can hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him she must purge into purity, all that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth; from her, through all the world's clamor, he must win his praise; in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace." -- John Ruskin.

I suppose that this paragraph explains the saying that marriages are made in heaven; I think that few of us would qualify for the bonds of matrimony before translation.