inscrutabilities

Updated: May 11, 2025

I really consider that one of the main things that has enabled me to master the difficult science of character-reading was the livid interest I always felt in that boy and the baffling inscrutabilities of his ways and inspirations." Tracy was not hearing a word. His spirits were gone, he was desolate. "Yes, a most wonderful character. Concealment that's the basis of it.

Mark Twain - The American Claimant

As for Madame Héger, Madame's purely episodic jealousy, her habits of surveillance, her small inscrutabilities of behaviour, became the fury, the treachery, the perfidy of Madame Beck. For treachery and perfidy, and agony and passion, were what Charlotte wanted for Villette. And yet it is true that Villette is a novel of experience, owing its conspicuous qualities very much to observation.

May Sinclair - The Three Brontës