Childhood and Early Life
Bonner's father was an Irish immigrant who married the daughter of a rich plantation family during the antebellum period. However, the Bonner family luck changed drastically during the American Civil War when her home was occupied by Union soldiers. A childhood of luxury and privilege gave way to an early womanhood of decreased possibilities and genteel poverty. Despite being "innately literary" from early childhood and the fact that Bonner wrote several stories that were published in small periodicals before she turned fifteen, her traditional upbringing and the prevailing societal attitudes offered Bonner little recourse other than marriage, and she married Edward McDowell on Valentines Day in 1871 at the age of twenty-one. She moved with her new husband to Texas shorty thereafter. Edward McDowell, however, emerged as a weak man unable to support his wife financially, and the birth of a daughter, Lilian, in November of that year left the family lodged first with the father of the bride and later with the mother of the groom.
Read more about this topic: Katherine Sherwood Bonner Mc Dowell
Famous quotes containing the words early life, childhood and, childhood, early and/or life:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892?)
“Adolescence is a border between childhood and adulthood. Like all borders, its teeming with energy and fraught with danger.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade!
Ah fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood strayd,”
—Thomas Gray (17161771)
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“I notice well that one stray step from the habitual path leads irresistibly into a new direction. Life moves forward, it never reverses its course.”
—Franz Grillparzer (17911872)