"She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, and said nothing about it, and prayed for the power to forgive, and did forgive. But he can't have found living with her forgiveness all that easy. Breakfast in a haze of forgiveness: coffee with forgiveness, porridge with forgiveness, forgiveness on the buttered toast. He would have been helpless against it, for how can you repudiate something that is never spoken? She resented, too, the nurse, or the many nurses, who had attended my father in the various hospitals. She wished him to owe his recovery to her alone— to her care, to her tireless devotion. That is the other side of selflessness: its tyranny."

Selflessness Forgiveness Marriage

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About Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, and critic known for literary fiction and speculative works. Her books include The Handmaids Tale and Alias Grace.

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