Annys. Why do you dislike men?
Elizabeth. (With a short laugh.) Why does the slave dislike the slave-owner?
Phoebe. Oh, come off the perch. You spend five thousand a year provided for you by a husband that you only see on Sundays. We’d all be slaves at that price.
Elizabeth. The chains have always been stretched for the few. My sympathies are with my class.
Annys. But men like Geoffrey—men who are devoting their whole time and energy to furthering our cause; what can you have to say against them?
Elizabeth. Simply that they don’t know what they’re doing. The French Revolution was nursed in the salons of the French nobility. When the true meaning of the woman’s movement is understood we shall have to get on without the male sympathiser.
(A pause.)
Annys. What do you understand is the true meaning of the woman’s movement?
Elizabeth. The dragging down of man from his position of supremacy. What else can it mean?
Annys. Something much better. The lifting up of woman to be his partner.