1
"There; how d'ye like that, eh? A liberal education in twelve volumes
with an index. Read them when ye want to. See?" ...
They looked less set up like that in a row than when they had lain about
on the floor of the den ... taking up Dante and Beethoven at tea time.
2
"Books posted? I wonder I'm not more rushed. I say--v'you greased all
Hancock's and the Pater's instruments?"
He knows I'm slacking ... he'll tell the others when they come back....
Mr. Leyton's door shut with a bang. He would be sitting reading the
newspaper until the next patient came. The eternal sounds of laughter
and dancing came up from the kitchen. The rest of the house was
perfectly still. Her miserable hand reopened the last page of the Index.
There were five or six more entries under "Woman."
3
If one could only burn all the volumes; stop the publication of them.
But it was all books, all the literature in the world, right back to
Juvenal ... whatever happened, if it could all be avenged by somebody in
some way, there was all that ... the classics, the finest
literature,--"unsurpassed." Education would always mean coming in
contact with all that. Schoolboys got their first ideas.... _How_ could
Newnham and Girton women endure it? How could they go on living and
laughing and talking?
* * * * *
And the modern men were the worst ... "we can now, with all the facts in
our hands sit down and examine her at our leisure." There was no getting
away from the scientific facts ... _inferior;_ mentally, morally,
intellectually and physically ... her development arrested in the
interest of her special functions ... reverting later towards the male
type ... old women with deep voices and hair on their faces ... leaving
off where boys of eighteen began. If that is true everything is as clear
as daylight. "Woman is not undeveloped man but diverse" falls to pieces.
Woman is undeveloped man ... if one could die of the loathsome visions
... I _must_ die. I can't go on living in it ... the whole world full of
_creatures_; half-human. And I am one of the half-human ones or shall be
if I don't stop now.
* * * * *
Boys and girls were much the same ... women stopped being people and
went off into hideous processes. What for? What was it all for?
Development. The wonders of science. The wonders of science for women
are nothing but gynæcology--all those frightful operations in the
"British Medical Journal" and those jokes--the hundred golden rules....
Sacred functions ... highest possibilities ... sacred for what? The hand
that rocks the cradle rules the world? The Future of the Race? What
world? What race? Men.... Nothing but men; forever.
* * * * *
If by one thought all the men in the world could be stopped, shaken and
slapped. There _must_, somewhere be some power that could avenge it all
... but if these men were right there was not. Nothing but Nature and
her decrees. Why was nature there? Who started it? If nature "took good
care" this and that ... there must be somebody. If there was a trick
there must be a trickster. If there is a god who arranged how things
should be between men and women and just let it go and go on I have no
respect for him. I should like to give him a piece of my mind....
* * * * *
It will all go on as long as women are stupid enough to go on bringing
men into the world ... even if civilised women stop the colonials and
primitive races would go on. It is a nightmare.
* * * * *
They invent a legend to put the blame for the existence of humanity on
woman and if she wants to stop it they talk about the wonders of
civilisation and the sacred responsibilities of motherhood. They can't
have it both ways. They also say women are not logical.
* * * * *
They despise women and they want to go on living--to
reproduce--themselves. None of their achievements, no "civilisation," no
art, no science can redeem that. There is no pardon possible for man.
The only answer to them is suicide; all women ought to agree to commit
suicide.
4
The torment grew as the August weeks passed. There were strange
interesting things unexpectedly everywhere. Streets of great shuttered
houses, their window boxes flowerless, all grey cool and quiet and
untroubled on a day of cool rain; the restaurants were no longer
crowded; torturing thought ranged there unsupported, goaded to madness,
just a mad feverish swirling in the head, ranging out, driven back by
the vacant eyes of little groups of people from the country. Unfamiliar
people appeared in the parks and streets talking and staring eagerly
about, women in felt boat-shaped hats trimmed with plaid
ribbons--Americans. They looked clever--and ignorant of worrying
thoughts. Men carried their parcels. But it was just the same. It was
impossible to imagine these dried, yellow-faced women with babies. But
if they liked all the fuss and noise and talk as much as they seemed to
do.... If they did _not_, what were they doing? What was everybody
_doing_? So busily.
5
Sleeplessness and every day a worse feeling of illness. Every day the
new torture. Every night the dreaming and tossing in the fierce,
stifling, dusty heat, the awful waking, to know that presently the
unbearable human sounds would begin again; the torment of walking
through the streets the solitary torment of leisure to read again in the
stillness of the office; the moments of hope of finding a fresh meaning;
hope of having misread.
6
There was nothing to turn to. Books were poisoned. Art. All the
achievements of men were poisoned at the root. The beauty of nature was
tricky femininity. The animal world was cruelty. Humanity was based on
cruelty. Jests and amusements were tragic distractions from tragedy.
Religion was the only hope. But even there there was no hope for women.
No future life could heal the degradation of having been a woman.
Religion in the world had nothing but insults for women. Christ was a
man. If it was true that he was God taking on humanity--he took on
_male_ humanity ... and the people who explained him, St. Paul and the
priests, the Anglicans and the non-Conformists it was the same story
everywhere. Even if religion could answer science and prove it wrong
there was no hope, for women. And no intelligent person can prove
science wrong. Life is poisoned, for women, at the very source. Science
is true and will find out more and more and things will grow more and
more horrible. Space is full of dead worlds. The world is cooling and
dying. Then why not stop _now_?
7
"Nature's great Salic Law will never be repealed." "Women can never
reach the highest places in civilisation." Thomas Henry Huxley. With
side-whiskers. A bouncing complacent walk. Thomas Henry Huxley.
(_Thom_as _Ba_bington Ma_cau_lay.) The same sort of walk. Eminent men.
Revelling in their cleverness. "The Lord has delivered him into my
hand." He did not believe in any future for anybody. But he built his
life up complacently on home and family life while saying all those
things about women, lived on them and their pain, ate their food,
enjoyed the comforts they made ... and wrote conceited letters to his
friends about his achievements and his stomach and his feelings.
8
What is it in me that stands back? Why can't it explain? My head will
burst if it can't explain. If I die now in wild anger it only makes the
thing more laughable on the whole.... That old man lives quite alone in
a little gaslit lodging. When he comes out he is quite alone. There is
nothing touching him anywhere. He will go quietly on like that till he
dies. But he is me. I saw myself in his eyes that day. But he must have
money. He can live like that with nothing to do but read and think and
roam about because he has money. It isn't fair. Some woman cleans his
room and does his laundry. His thoughts about women are awful. It's the
best way ... but I've made all sorts of plans for the holidays. After
that I will save and never see anybody and never stir out of Bloomsbury.
The woman in black works. It's only in the evenings she can roam about
seeing nothing. But the people she works for know nothing about her. She
knows. She is sweeter than he. She is sweet. I like her. But he is more
me.