"I've often walked along the streets where people live all in a row, and
one house is exactly like another house, and wondered what on earth the
women were doing inside," he said. "Just consider: it's the beginning of
the twentieth century, and until a few years ago no woman had ever come
out by herself and said things at all. There it was going on in the
background, for all those thousands of years, this curious silent
unrepresented life. Of course we're always writing about women--abusing
them, or jeering at them, or worshipping them; but it's never come from
women themselves. I believe we still don't know in the least how they
live, or what they feel, or what they do precisely. If one's a man, the
only confidences one gets are from young women about their love affairs.
But the lives of women of forty, of unmarried women, of working women,
of women who keep shops and bring up children, of women like your aunts
or Mrs. Thornbury or Miss Allan--one knows nothing whatever about them.
They won't tell you. Either they're afraid, or they've got a way of
treating men. It's the man's view that's represented, you see. Think of
a railway train: fifteen carriages for men who want to smoke. Doesn't it
make your blood boil? If I were a woman I'd blow some one's brains
out. Don't you laugh at us a great deal? Don't you think it all a great
humbug? You, I mean--how does it all strike you?"
His determination to know, while it gave meaning to their talk, hampered
her; he seemed to press further and further, and made it appear so
important.
Pages:
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310