Carping

Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as "Jane Eyre:" in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry -- that parent of crime -- an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths.

However, since there are 488 pages in all for a bargain price of a guinea one must not be too carping.

Written as a ripost to Samuel Constant’s short story "Le Mari sentimental", in which the husband is driven to despair and ultimately suicide by his carping wife, Mistress Henly begins with an account of the wife’s reading of the Constant story and how as a reader she links the text of imagination to the realities of her own life.

“Oh, stop your carping, Dawn!” I told myself. “You can't expect charming tones, and Oriental do-dads and apple trees in a German boarding-house.”