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My first reactions to the novel were of dislike. I do not really like the voice of the character, because of her 19th century persona which just seems a little cold to me. In the beginning, I wasn't really interested in what she was thinking. Like some of my other classmates who have already posted, I thought, "Here we go again...". It seemed to me like just another one of those books about a woman trying to prove herself in a world of men or thinking she was the first woman to do whatever she "chooses". 

While the voice of the narrator, Una, kind of bugs me, and the whole premise of her character from my first impressions annoy me too, I still can find a small connection to her, but only in a way which relates to what we've been learning in class. We have been constantly discussing if we can or cannot consciously control the direction of our own lives and I think Una is a case to consider within this. She says she wanted to make her own life, meaning she wanted to choose for herself what her life would be and not have someone else like her father choose for her. And yet she cannot control what happens to her, no matter what she chooses. In other words, she is not able to make the world as she chooses, rather, her choices lead to the reality of her own world. She may think she has freedom in her life by going to sea but that decision leads her to certain aspects which shape her life that she doesn't necessarily choose. Una shows that we can choose certain things that help shape happenings in our life, but we cannot control or choose the outcomes from that. 

I see this novel as a good finale for this course about choice, but I think we should have read the whole thing as I feel like we would have gotten a lot more out of it (as Leigh attests to).