heredity

I just finished a book,written at the beginning of the 20Th century by a woman who happens to be a great-great -great aunt (sister to my paternal great grandmother). She was quite famous during her time and very prolific. Her novels were sentimental, odes to the power of love, with a dash of of turmoil and offense towards the plight of women then. She talks of feminism, already in 1905,and rebels against the double standard of morality and the inequality in work, justice, marriage. Her character is a 30 year old woman, who married young and whose husband fell ill and became dependant and mean spirited. She took care of him, full filling her duty to the world.But, young and passionate, she fell in love with another man, had an affair and bore an illegitimate child that her husband thought was his.She hid the truth. She was a somewhat liberated woman for her day, working as a journalist in a newly formed woman's magazine and her view of life was seen through the prism of her free friends .In the end love prevailed, after a new lover requested of her total sincerity, and a devotion to love.
Her last line in the book goes like that: "He wanted to talk, put all his faith, all his tenderness, all his fervor in one word and he could only whisper: my dear wife... Victory belonged to love which had never weakened,never despaired...to love, strong like life."
It is in my blood.