Everyday Canvas

An Elizabeth Gaskell Quote

Prompt: "I'll not listen to reason-reason always means what someone has to say." Elizabeth Gaskell What are your thoughts on this quote?

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What others label as reason, meaning what is reasonable for them, may not work for someone else. Everyone has to think for himself or herself and find what works for them. In that way, everyone’s reason, or reasoning of the general public or the ruling class, may not apply to any one individual. This has to do mostly with the personality, which means how people usually relate to the world and their inner selves.

Related to one’s personality, one’s reasoning includes openness to experience, agreeableness, achievement, conscientiousness, and above all his or her freedom to make choices. Since a person makes his.her choices upon the dictates of his personality, other people’s choices do not correspond with his or hers.

As this is a quote from a Victorian short story, in which Martha, who is a caretaker and companion for an older woman, rebels when the old woman pushes on her what she wants rather than what Martha wants. What Martha wants is to make a pudding, but the woman doesn’t want anything sweet and she orders mutton or something like it.

Over this, Martha is ready to resign, despite a certain financial agony for her, but when she is presented with the fact that the old woman would suffer without her, she comes to terms by deciding to make the pudding with her own money for she is sure of the outcome that the old woman will eat the pudding and will like it, too.