Somebody should found a vast and cheerful sisterhood for women between
forty and fifty; a kind of refuge for the victims of the years of
transition. For during that time women would be happier in voluntary
exile, or at any rate entirely separated from the other sex.
Since all are suffering from the same trouble, they might help each
other to make life, not only endurable, but harmonious. We are all more
or less mad then, although we struggle to make others think us sane.
I say "we," though I am not of their number--in age, perhaps, but not in
temperament. Nevertheless I hear the stealthy footsteps of the
approaching years. By good fortune, or calculation, I have preserved my
youthful appearance, but it has cost me dear to economise my emotions.
Old age, in truth, is only a goal to be foreseen. A mountain to be
climbed; a peak from which to see life from every side--provided we
have not been blinded by snowfalls on the way. I do not fear old age;
only the hard ascent to it has terrors for me. The day, the hour, when
we realise that something has gone from our lives; when the cry of our
heart provokes laughter in others!
To all of us women comes a time in life when we believe we can conquer
or deceive time. But soon we learn how unequal is the struggle. We all
come to it in the end.
Then we grow anxious. Anxious at the coming of day; still more anxious
at the coming of night. We deck ourselves out at night as though in this
way we could put our anxiety to flight.
We are careful about our food and our rest; we watch that our smiles
leave no wrinkles.... Yet never a word of our secret terror do we
whisper aloud. We keep silence or we lie. Sometimes from pride,
sometimes from shame.
Hitherto nobody has ever proclaimed this great truth: that as they grow
older--when the summer comes and the days lengthen--women become more
and more women. Their feminality goes on ripening into the depths of
winter.
Yet the world compels them to steer a false course. Their youth only
counts so long as their complexions remain clear and their figures slim.
Otherwise they are exposed to cruel mockery. A woman who tries late in
life to make good her claim to existence, is regarded with contempt. For
her there is neither shelter nor sympathy.
It sometimes happens that a winter gale strips all the leaves from a
tree in a single night. When does a woman grow old in body and soul in
one swift and merciful moment? From our birth we are accursed.
I blame no one for my failure in life. It was in my own hands. If I
could live it through again from the start, it is more than probable I
should waste the years for a second time.