everything. It is a sort of result, poor and shaky because the real inside civilisation of women, the one thing that has been in them from the first and is not in the natural man, not made by ‘things,’ is kept out of it. Women do not need civilisation. It is apt to bore them. But it can never rise above their level. They keep it back. That does not matter, to themselves. But it matters to men. And if they want their old civilisation to be anything but a dreary-weary puzzle, they must leave off imagining themselves a race of gods fighting against chaos, and thinking of women as part of the chaos they have to civilise. There isn’t any ‘chaos.’ Never has been. It’s the principal masculine illusion. It is not a truth to say that women must be civilised. Feminists are not only an insult to womanhood. They are a libel on the universe.” In the awful presence she had spoken herself out, found and recited her best most liberating words. The little unseen room shone, its shining speaking up to her from small things immediately under her eyes. Light, pouring from her speech, sent a radiance about the thick black head and its monstrous bronze face. He might have his thoughts, might even look them, from the utmost abyss of crude male life, but he had helped her, and his blind unconscious outlines shared the unknown glory. But she doubted if she would remember that thoughts flowed more easily, with surprising ease, as if given, waiting, ready to be scanned and stated, when one’s eyes ceased to look outwards. If she could remember it, it might prove to be the solution of social life.
“These things are all matters of opinion. Whereas it is a matter of indisputable fact that in the past women have been subject.”
“If you believe that it is impossible for us to associate. Because we are living in two utterly different worlds.”
“On the contrary. This difference is a most excellent basis for association.”