And we must always beware of romance: of people who love nature, or flowers, or dogs, or babies, or pure adventure. It means they are getting into a love-swing where everything is easy and nothing opposes their own egoism. Nature, babies, dogs are so lovable, because they can’t answer back. The primrose, alas! couldn’t pipe up and say: “Hey! Bill! get off the barrow!”
That’s the best of men and women. There’s bound to be a lot of back chat. You can Lucy Gray your woman as hard as you like, one day she’s bound to come back at you: “Who are you when you’re at home?”
A man isn’t going to spread his own ego over a woman, as he has done over nature and primroses, and dogs, or horses, or babies, or “the people”, or the proletariat or the poor-and-needy. The old hen takes the cock by the beard, and says: “That’s me, mind you!”
Man is an individual, and woman is an individual. Which sounds easy.
But it’s not as easy as it seems. These two individuals are as different as chalk and cheese. True, a pound of chalk weighs as much as a pound of cheese. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, not the scales.
That is to say, you can announce that men and women should be equal and are equal. All right. Put them in the scales.
Alas! my wife is about twenty pounds heavier than I am.
Nothing to do but to abstract. L’homme est né libre: with a napkin round his little tail.
Nevertheless, I am a citizen, my wife is a citizeness: I can vote, she can vote, I can be sent to prison, she can be sent to prison, I can have a passport, she can have a passport, I can be an author, she can be an authoress. Ooray! OO-bloomin-ray!
You see, we are both British subjects. Everybody bow!