Sabine and Christabel's cousin relationship

Sabine and Christabel’s cousin relationship is both a family bond and a contest over intimacy, care, and inheritance. When Christabel arrives in Sabine’s father’s country seeking refuge, Sabine hopes for a friend and companion; instead, she watches Christabel draw close to her father and fears losing the place left vacant by her absent mother. The relationship remains unsettled, marked by jealousy and guarded speech, but it also helps carry Christabel’s papers through generations of women to Maud Bailey.

Kinship and the First Signs of Jealousy

Sabine initially imagines Christabel as a cousin near her own age: a friend, confidante, and example. That understanding shifts during an evening around the fire. As Gode tells a story, Sabine sees Christabel knit faster, then put a hand to her breast and head as if overheated or short of air. Sabine’s father takes Christabel’s hand and holds it; after the story, he kisses her hair, and Christabel clings to him. The tableau looks to Sabine like a family, but it also exposes a difference in their positions: Christabel is much older than Sabine, though closer to her age than to her father’s, and the intimacy between the two adults unsettles Sabine’s sense of belonging.

Sabine does not want Christabel to replace her as her father’s companion, or to take her mother’s place. She insists to herself that these are distinct matters: she has not aspired to be her mother, but her own place exists as it does because her mother is absent. What she fears losing is her father’s care and the first right to hear his thoughts and discoveries. Her private image of a thief stealing his kiss gives physical force to a jealousy she considers improper. When her father opens his arms at bedtime, Sabine enters and leaves them quickly, stiffly and dutifully, then runs upstairs and shuts her door. She recognizes that Christabel’s kindness is natural and that she has often complained of their dull life, yet she cannot prevent resentment from accompanying the change.

Sanctuary, Suspicion, and Attempted Reconciliation

The cousins’ conversation on a walk makes the distance between them explicit. Christabel asks whether she has offended Sabine and says that she has felt kindness from the household, finding in her father’s country a sanctuary, a kind of home. Sabine’s outward response is courteous, but she continues to feel that Christabel treats her father differently from herself. When Sabine asks whether Christabel distrusts women, Christabel begins to say that she has trusted women, then stops and says that this has brought great harm. Her unfinished disclosure hints at a painful past without explaining it; Sabine sees her turn back with a hand to her side and interprets her as both pitiable and melodramatic, while acknowledging her own youth and strength.

On December 31, Sabine makes a small gesture toward repair, bringing barley sugar and a book she had borrowed before her anger began. She apologizes for being disagreeable and says she has misunderstood matters. Christabel answers coolly and challenges her to explain what she thinks Christabel’s situation is. Sabine cannot say what she suspects; she stammers and bursts into tears. Christabel replies that she is a grown woman who can look after herself, does not want Sabine’s help, and is glad that Sabine is no longer consumed by rage. Her words set a boundary while acknowledging the harm anger can do.

The exchange does not resolve the conflict. Sabine feels that Christabel understands all her suspicions and resentments but has chosen not to forgive her. She is angry again and leaves weeping. At the same time, she believes Christabel does need help, since she has come to the household for it, and worries about what will become of Christabel, the family, and the child. By late January, Christabel’s condition has become visible enough that Sabine decides to speak to her father. The pregnancy turns an intimate rivalry into a pressing family concern, but the evidence does not show that Sabine’s planned disclosure settles their relationship.

Papers Passed Through the Female Line

The cousins’ connection persists beyond their shared household in the custody of Christabel’s writing. After Christabel dies in 1890, her sister Sophia sends a package of papers to her daughter May, Sabine’s descendant. Sophia’s accompanying letter says that Christabel had often wished May to receive her papers and poems and believed that they should be handed down through the female line. The family transmission therefore preserves not only documents but also a stated wish about who should inherit them. The account says that the papers were kept, while giving no evidence that May took an interest in them.

This history gives the cousin relationship a long afterlife: Christabel’s family connection to Sabine’s line becomes part of the provenance of the work Maud Bailey later studies. In the contemporary scholarly world, Maud says that her family’s papers—including Christabel’s literary works—are deposited at the Women’s Studies Resource Centre at Lincoln, while the collection has relatively few letters. The inheritance links private kinship and the preservation of women’s writing, even as the surviving account leaves gaps in the chain of personal attention and custody.

Significance of the Relationship

The relationship is defined by a mismatch between kinship’s promise of closeness and the emotional claims that closeness brings. For Sabine, Christabel is at once cousin, potential companion, and a woman whose intimacy with Sabine’s father threatens the special access she associates with her own filial place. For Christabel, the household offers sanctuary, but her guarded answers show that refuge does not mean surrendering independence or inviting Sabine’s intervention. Their exchanges preserve both attachment and antagonism: Sabine offers an apology and a gift, while Christabel accepts neither as grounds for abandoning her boundaries.

The papers passed from Christabel through Sophia and May to Maud extend the bond beyond the immediate conflict. The female line becomes a means of transmission where the cousins’ personal understanding remains incomplete. That contrast is central to the relationship’s significance: affection and rivalry complicate the household, while inheritance carries Christabel’s work forward even when the family record cannot establish who read, valued, or cared for it at each stage.