“Womanliness, as you call it, won’t bring in bread or clothes or pay rent,” said Emily. “And I can’t quite see why it should be womanly to make a poor living at drudgery and unwomanly to make a good living at agreeable work.”
“Oh, well, you know, Emmy, that nature never intended women to work.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what nature intended. Sometimes I’ve an idea she’s like a painter who, when they asked him what his canvas was going to be, said, ‘Oh, as it may happen.’ But whatever nature’s intentions, women do work. I’m not thinking about an unimportant little class of women who spend their time in dressing and simpering at one another. I’m thinking of women—the race of women. They work as the men work. They bear more than half the burden. They work side by side with the men—in the shops and offices and schoolrooms, on the farms and in the homes. They toil as hard and as intelligently and as usefully as the men; and, if they’re married, they usually make a bare living. The average husband thinks he’s doing his wife a favour by letting her live with him. And he is furious if she asks what he’s doing with their joint earnings.”
“You put it well,” said Theresa. “You ought to say that to Percival. I suppose he could answer you.”
“No doubt I’m boring you,” said Emily. “But it makes me indignant for women to accept men’s absurd ideas on the subject of themselves—to think that they’ve got to submit and play the hypocrite in order to fit men’s silly so-called ideals of them. And the worst of it is——”
Emily stopped and when she began again, talked of the faces and clothes in the passing carriages. She had intended to go on to denounce herself for weakness in being unable to follow reason and altogether shake off ideas which she regarded as false and foolish and discreditable. “As if,” she thought “any toil in making my own living could possibly equal the misery of being tied to a commonplace fellow like Edgar, with my life one long denial of all that I believe honest and true. I his wife, the mother of his children, and listening to his narrow prosings day in and day out—it’s impossible!”
She straightened herself and drew in a long breath of the bright air of the Bois.
“Listen to me, Theresa,” she said. “Suppose you were walking along a road alone—not an especially pleasant road—a little dusty and, at times rough—but still on the whole not a bad road. And suppose you saw a clumsy, heavy manikin, dropped by some showman and lying by the wayside. Would you say, ‘I am tired. The road is rough. I’ll pick up this manikin and strap it on my back to make the journey lighter?’”
“Whatever do you mean?” asked Theresa.
“Why, I mean that I’m not going to marry—not just yet—I think.”