Misvoice

Law is but the voice; government itself only the body; civilization is the essence, the spirit—the spirit of ages of progress and conquest from rude nature and ruder men—a spirit sometimes, alas! misvoiced; sometimes misembodied.

That statement was received with applause, and the hon. gentleman, addressing himself to the hon. member for Selkirk, said: 'the hon. gentleman will see from these manifestations of opinion that I have not misvoiced the views of the hon. gentlemen who sit around me.'

My reading for this chapter confirmed that the Muslim woman was misvoiced or un-voiced in almost all discrourses surrounding her life. While the authenticity of various voices remains problematic, it was clear to me that she needed to and could voice herself.

Ackroyd's solicitude for Eliot here seems to me punctilious and, though not misplaced, misvoiced: 'For a man who was peculiarly attentive to the manners and to the formal courtesies of "society", the behaviour of a deranged wife would inevitably lead to anxiety and a sense of shame not far from panic.'