Chapter 95 Wife Checking Husband's Works

Stevenson's wife nursed him ailingly like a mother, but also checked his work. Stevenson, a famous British novelist, has a very strict wife.Her wife, Fanny, was thirty-two when Stevenson met her at twenty-six, and she was Mrs. Osborne, with a daughter of twelve and a son of four.But Stevenson pursued her desperately and wanted to snatch her over.Four years later, it finally got his wish. Stevenson's father was very disappointed in the marriage, thinking that his son had married an old grandmother. Fanny tends to the sickly Stevenson (he suffers from tuberculosis) like a mother, but also examines his writings.When Stevenson wrote a love story that contained the shadow of an old lover, Fanny immediately tore up his manuscript.Subsequently, women rarely appeared in his novels.Stevenson wrote to his friend: My wife hates, loathes, and resents the women in my novels.

But Stevenson seemed resigned to his wife's examination.For example, his masterpiece "The Strange Story of Dr. Jack and Mr. Hyde" (also known as "Dr. Incarnation") was inspired by one of his dreams. After waking up, he wrote 27,000 words in three days. .But when he triumphantly read the draft to Fanny, Fanny didn't like his arrangement, saying that Stevenson had sacrificed a good morality story by indulging in passionism.After a while of heated debate, Stevenson finally gave up his original idea, followed his wife's advice, threw the manuscript into the fire, and rewrote it.The novels we see today have been greatly revised.

If it weren't for Fanny's inspection and persuasion, Stevenson might have written a novel that shocked the world, but it was so unacceptable that even the library could not put it.Fanny tamed his genius, but somewhat limited his wild horse-like imagination.Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing may never be answered.