Florence Nightingale did NOT want to get married...

The passage that struck me when I was reading Strachey’s work is on page 115. It is a quote from Florence Nightingale and she is referring to the idea of marriage.
“To be nailed to a continuation and exaggeration of my present life… to put it out of my power ever to be able to seize the chance of forming for myself a true and rich life-“
Marriage would be a continuation of her life of society, parties, vacations, and other frivolities of life. It would be an exaggeration because as the matron of a household she would have even greater responsibilities, including raising her own children to follow the same code of conduct.
If that is how Nightingale felt about marriage it is easy to see why she found it difficult to find common ground with other Victorian women. This was an age where matrimony was the most important goal. For women especially it was where they would find their identity for the rest of their lives. In fact only a few pages earlier, page 111, Strachey wrote, “It was only natural to suppose that Florence would show a proper appreciation of them by doing her duty in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call her- in other words, by marrying.” This statement reveals the rigid structure of Victorian structure, as it dictated the path of the lives of its citizens based on class, wealth, and gender. Strachey’s implied criticism is easy to pick out here, and it seems that this may be one area in which Strachey applauds Nightingale. For while other women in her position looked on to the prospect of marriage as not only inevitable but also desirable, Nightingale considered to marriage to be similar to death. Strachey quotes her as saying, “What is to become of me? A desirable young man? Dust and ashes! What was there desirable in such a thing as that? In my thirty-first year, I see nothing desirable but death.” Since marriage was the highest ideal for Victorian women, and Nightingale looked on the institution with such disdain, it follows that she would find many women intolerable. In fact on page 150 Strachey references the letters in which she berates women for being stupid and inept, among other things.
Nightingale’s unhappiness at the thought of marriage reveals her single-mindedness. At this point in her life she had not yet realized her dream of being a nurse and a powerful woman of influence, but she knew that she wanted something other than the norm. She knew that whatever life she was seeking, it would not be found in conventional Victorian society. Whatever other faults Florence Nightingale had, she always knew what she wanted and was willing to sacrifice all social orthodoxies to get there.