Christina Alberta's father

by H. G. Wells

“It wouldn’t be if you were in trousers. We’ve agreed to unsex you to that extent. Why shouldn’t you be ambitious?”

“You think I might do work—scientific work—at last—as you do?”

“Why not?”

“A girl?”

“You’re the sort of stuff I am, Christina Alberta.”

“Do you think—some day—I might even come to work—to work with you?”

“Kindred minds may follow kindred courses,” he said, with the completest recognition of their relationship “Why not?”

She stood and looked at him with a dark excitement in her eyes and he had a momentary intimation of all that he might be to her. Gallant she was and fine and ambitious; a wonderful life to come out of nothingness into his own. And she meant this relationship to grow, as well it might grow, into something very great and deep for both of them.

He went off at a tangent to talk of the contrast of men and women students and of men and women as workers. “You’ll never run parallel with men, you free women, so don’t expect it. You’ve got to work out a way that is similar perhaps but different. Different down to the roots.” He argued that probably the whole fabric of a man had its qualities that a woman’s did not possess and vice versa, down even to a muscular fibre or a nerve tendril. A time might come when we should be able to put a drop of blood or a scrap of skin under the microscope or apply some subtle reagent to it and tell its sex. “A man resists,” he said. “A man is intractable. He has greater inertia, physical and mental. That keeps him to his course. Men compared with women are steadier and stupider. Women compared with men are quicker and sillier. Bludgeons and bodkins.”

He talked of his student days when women medical students were still rather novel intrusions, and from that he passed to his father’s prejudices, to his father’s treatment of his mother and his boyish days. Presently they were exchanging experiences of childish delusions and fancies. She forgot how much older and more experienced he was in the ease of his talk. He told her about himself because he recognized her right to know about him; he listened with a friendly eagerness to all she chose to tell him of her Daddy and herself and about her impressions and her few adventures in encounter as a suburban student in London. They shared their delight in Paul Lambone’s kindly absurdity. Presently it occurred to her to offer him drink. The Crumbs had left a bottle of beer and a syphon. But Devizes asked her to make tea and helped her with the kettle. Meanwhile the mutual exploration went on. Their friendliness grew richer and deeper as they talked. She had never before met so intimate and delightful a curiosity as his. She had had friends before but no such friendliness; she had had a lover but never such intimacy.