In July 1887, a young Dutchwoman confided her innermost thoughts to her diary. She had just turned down a suitor for her hand who had — quite out of the blue — declared his love. Even so, the prospect of a future life had opened up. “He conjured up visions of the ideal I have always dreamed of,” she wrote, “a rich life full of variation, full of intellectual stimulation, a circle of friends around us who were working for a good cause.” Her “indefinable searching and longing” would be transformed into “a clearly defined duty”: to make him happy.
In the short term, her hopes were cruelly disappointed. Eighteen months later, she met her suitor again and, this time, when he put the question