force the admittance of the holes in a theory privately, and leave the form of words going on and on in the world perpetually parroted, infecting the sky. “Wise women know better and go their way without listening,” is not enough. It is not only the insult to women; a contempt for men is a bulwark against that, but introduces sourness into one’s own life. … It is the impossibility of witnessing the pouring on of a vast, repeating public life that is missing the significance of everything.
Yet what a support, she thought with a sideways glance, was his own gentleness … gentilesse … and humanity, to his own theory. He was serene and open in the presence of this central bitterness. If she could summon, in words, convincing evidence of the inferiority of man, he would cheerfully accept it and go on unmaimed. But a private reconstruction of standards in agreement with one person would not bring healing. It was history, literature, the way of stating records, reports, stories, the whole method of statement of things from the beginning that was on a false foundation.
If only one could speak as quickly as one’s thoughts flashed, and several thoughts together, all with a separate life of their own and yet belonging, everybody would be understood. As it was, even in the most favourable circumstances, people could hardly communicate with each other at all.
“I have nothing to say. It is not a thing that can be argued out. Those women’s rights people are the worst of all. Because they think women have been ‘subject’ in the past. Women never have been subject. Never can be. The proof of this is the way men have always been puzzled and everlastingly trying fresh theories; founded on the very small experience of women any man is capable of having. Disabilities, imposed by law, are a stupid insult to women, but have never touched them as individuals. In the long run they injure only men. For they keep back the civilisation of the outside world, which is the only thing men can make. It is not