9/20 - Seven letters; no T, S, N or L...

How I wish that the Supportive Shower-Throwing Sister had made the cut for Thursday instead of the earlier-in-the-week jumble. That letter was much more satisfactory than any of these, raising a nice point of how not to punish the baby without condoning or dismissing the bad conduct of the parents. What strikes me most of all is that the LW herself, so eager to throw the shower, suffers from the same obsessive lack of guilt as Miss Brodie. It might be interesting to know which of the sister's friends are among the group of eager shower-throwers. As seems to be the case with the LW, they could well be saying a good deal more about their own condoning of the affair than anything else. The sister's guilt reflects on them. There might also be much to be gained by delving into the mother's excessive shaming, starting with the determination of whether or not it's excessive. Here again it's tricky because the bulk of any disapproval ought to be directed towards the adulterous fiance, who was the vow-breaker while the sister was the accessory, but the sister is probably going to end up being the one taking most of it. All in all, a highly more satisfactory letter than any of these four.

Happily, they all merit quick disposal of the same sort.

Dear LW1: How fortunate that your intended has revealed her true colours before any actual exchange of vows. You could reasonably pre-empt her ultimatum by issuing one of her own; either she accepts DW1 as a person who existed and has a right to a spot in memory and IL1s as members of your family whom she will be making members of her family if she wishes the relationship to progress, or she is entirely free to leave. She could be given a period of time in which to adjust her ideas and expectations. But odds are that this course would prove to be time wasted. If you don't think more time a worthwhile investment, you'd be perfectly justified in imagining that you'd written to Mr Savage instead, in which case you'd surely have received the reply that you ought to - all together now to the tune of the theme for the Mickey Mouse Club - DTMFA.

Dear LW2: Why on earth did you consult the Prudecutor? Surely Dr Westheimer would have been a much better choice. Mr Savage has enough on his plate at the moment, and he is not always the best authority possible to select for consultation on questions concerning woman parts. As the only sensible reason for consulting the Prudecutor instead of someone who knows about and has probably practised the enjoyment of the parts in question can be that you want the Prudecutor to give you an excuse to cut your husband off (but you frame it sufficiently cleverly to avoid being called naughty things by the commentariat), I shall go one step beyond that and give you permission to divorce on grounds of sexual incompatibility. If not now, it will happen soon enough. Why waste time?

Dear LW3: Divorce at once. What has taken you so long? You married into a family that made it plain that would always choose coddling and accommodating a member with an abusive personality, whether or not his tendency to abuse ever turned sexual or not. You learned this quite early on in your marriage. Instead of scorning their ridiculous intrusion into your conduct, you even joined in the accommodation. Bad LW3! There might have been some interest in examining the reform had it not been for the disturbing new development. And you are quite right to be disturbed. People who are coddled and accommodated so long, like Sir Walter Elliot, get worse and worse. H3 showed early on that he would not cut off his family for intolerable conduct. In reality, he ought to have murdered his brother several decades ago. Fear of imprisonment ought not to have deterred him, as there would have been available to him the services of at least one barrister with a lifetime's experience in getting murderers acquitted.

Should you choose to remain married, however, there is always entrapment if H3 does not feel up to murder. Correspondence is possible if U3 is not particularly wary and discerning. Or there could well be some way to catch MIL3 and U3 doing something that, while not yet of an endangering nature to D3, is clearly Out of Bounds. H3 should be active in devising such a scenario.

Dear LW4: Divorce your husband on grounds of insufficient intelligence. Anyone with any sense would have long ago imported a dead bed bug or several into the home in question and presented them to F4s to demonstrate the need for new bedding NOW!

Moral: "A baronet must be seen to live like a baronet."