“You’ve got to create an illusion you know.”
“Why illusion? Life isn’t an illusion.”
“We don’t know what life is. You don’t know what life is. You think too much. Life’s got to be lived. The difference between you and me is that you think to live and I live to think. You’ve made a jolly good start. Done things. Come out and got your economic independence. But you’re stuck.”
“Now there’s somebody who’s writing about life. Who’s shown what has been going on from the beginning. Mrs. Stetson. It was the happiest day of my life when I read Women and Economics.”
“It’s no good, you know, that idea of hers. Women have got to specialise. They are specialists from the beginning. They can’t run families, and successful careers at the same time.”
“They could if life were differently arranged. They will. It’s not that so much. Though it’s a relief to know that homes won’t be always a tangle of nerve-racking heavy industries which ought to be done by men. But the blaze of light she brings is by showing that women were social from the first and that all history has been the gradual socialisation of the male. It is partly complete. But the male world is still savage.”
“The squaw, Miriam, was—”
“Absolutely social and therefore civilised, compared to the hunting male. She went out of herself. Mother and son was society. He had no chance. Everyone, even his own son, was an enemy and a rival.”
“That’s old Ellis’s idea. There’s been a matriarchate all right, Miriam, for your comfort.”
“I don’t want comfort, I want truth.”