Florence Nightengale - Independent and Prideful

No one could ever question that Florence Nightengale is a good person or deny all the good she did, however Lytton Strachey's portrait of her does suggest she may have an ulterior motive. It seems as though she was somewhat of a control freak, and the more things she changed, the easier it was to feed her ego. As it says on page 112, "...when her sister had shown a healthy pleasure in tearing her dolls to pieces, had she shown an almost morbid one in sewing them up again?" Perhaps this is why she was so obsessed with having her own independence which in those days was considered "almost unimaginable" for a lady. Part of her may have just wanted to get away from her parents and show them how incharge she was. She was so dead set on being her own person, independent of the social norms of the day that she denied herself a chance at being in love. Lytton Stratchey describes her as having a feeling, "...which she had never known before." He claims it was "The most powerful and the profoundest of all the instincts of humanity laid claim upon her." Still she "had the strength to stamp it underfoot," not wanting to be part of a Victorian marriage, something she hated so much. She chose to deny herself happiness rather than swallow her pride.