In our times no woman has the right to live under the shelter of a man's labor. The woman who dares to accept such shelter should abdicate and commit her dignity to the hands that are productive. She should consent to her dethronement and take the condescending love that is fed to the weaker without complaining.
Men begin—the women know it well—by adoring this weakness. "My wife," that piece of fragility, those useless days, those little arms which don't know how to do anything, the jewels he brings home, the great astonished eyes, the mincing steps, everything that is touching and contrasts with the struggle of his existence. Then he comes to extract pride from this relation. "It is I who protect, sustain, feed her. It is I...." He mounts a few steps higher and sees her a little lower, incapable, infantile, unequal to battle, unequal to his power. Each day inevitably finds them a little farther apart, and she in approaching him is bound to raise her eyes while he condescends. If his love lasts it takes the very form of contempt, though neither is conscious of it. Which is just and proper.
A woman supported by her husband has no right to protest. If she is not earning her living, she should have some work to do, should use her arms, her idle strength, her health. Merely bringing children into the world is not enough.
The fat lady starts up from her entrenchment of cushions. "We are almost there. We must get ready."
Bags pulled open emit the animal odor of leather and give out nickel glints as they are snapped shut again. Then the fire of the rings disappears under the gloves. "We are there!" They are now quite free to stare at me.
What a metamorphosis. She has resumed her former appearance of a lady. She is scarcely pretty. In the glimmer of the night-lamp she seems sharp-featured and masked by a ghastly pallor, as if the generous sun had abjured her forever.
Each turn of the wheels brings us closer to the town. The young woman drawing herself up reassumes her manner of a somebody. She is back in her setting, already less unhappy because she is nearer her unhappiness. She pulls out her watch. Five minutes still. Time enough to lean on one's elbow and think sad thoughts pro tem, which come running like a docile flock.
I put my hand up to my forehead to prevent her searching my eyes for the fountain of compassion denied her. There is no compassion for her in me, neither is there in the opal-tinted meadows, nor under the sapphire of the sky. To find compassion she would have to reconstruct her life from top to bottom. A fate such as hers lies outside the fate of humanity; suffering such as hers is beside and apart from the suffering of humanity. I say her fate has not made her suffer enough yet and the woman does not deserve to live.
A woman who does nothing is fallen in the sight of love.