Day by day he grew into a clearer understanding of the memories bequeathed to him by his father; he began to interpret remarks, details of behaviour, instances of wrath, which, though they had stamped themselves on his recollection, conveyed at the time no precise significance.

The issue was that he hardened himself against the influence of his mother and his aunt, regarding them as in league against the free progress of his education.
As women, again, he despised these relatives.

It is almost impossible for a bright-witted lad born in the lower middle class to escape this stage of development.

The brutally healthy boy contemns the female sex because he sees it incapable of his own athletic sports, but Godwin was one of those upon whose awaking intellect is forced a perception of the brain-defect so general in women when they are taught few of life's graces and none of its serious concerns,--their paltry prepossessions, their vulgar sequaciousness, their invincible ignorance, their absorption in a petty self.

And especially is this phase of thought to be expected in a boy whose heart blindly nourishes the seeds of poetical passion.