“You see, Miriam, if instead of beating me, you will tell me your thoughts, it is quite possible that mine may be modified. There is at least nothing of the bigot in me.”
“It is not what people may be made to see for a few minutes in conversations that counts. It is the conclusions they come to, instinctively, by themselves.” He wanted to try and think as she did ...... “chose attendrissante; il me ressemblaient” ..... life .. was different, to everybody, even to intellectual male vain-boasters, from everybody’s descriptions; there was nothing to point to anywhere that exactly corresponded to spoken opinions. But the relieving truth of this was only realised privately. The things went on being said. Men did not admit their private discoveries in public. It was not enough to see and 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 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.”
“You think I can cheerfully regard myself as an emancipated slave, with traditions of slavery for memory and the form of a slave as an everlasting heritage?”
“Remember that heredity is cross-wise. You are probably more the daughter of your father ...”