He was silent for a moment, recollecting his argument, then plunged on.
“It was all right when it was instinctive and natural but now it’s so damned self-conscious. They’re picking all their instincts to pieces, reading Freud on sex, analyzing every honest caress, worrying about being submerged in homes and husbands. It’s wrecking, I tell you, Walter. It’s spoiling their grain. And I’ll tell you another thing. It’s the women’s colleges that start it all. If I had my way I’d burn the things to the ground. They start all the trouble.”
Walter broke the silence again.
“The reason I wanted to talk to you was because some of the difficulties you suggest were simmering in my own mind. And it always seemed to me that you and Helen got away with the whole business so well. You’ve had children—you’ve managed to keep everything—haven’t you worked it out for yourself anyway?”
“You can’t work it out,” said Gage, impatiently, “by just having children. It doesn’t end the chapter.”
“It’s a difficult time.”
“It’s a rotten time. You know I can’t help feeling, Walter, that the women of this generation are potentially all that they claim to be actually. It isn’t that I’d deny them any chance. But to let them be guided by fakirs or by their own inexperience will land them in a worse mess than ever. Look at some of them who have achieved prominence-pictures in the New York Times anyway. Their very pictures show they are neurasthenic. Look at the books written about them that they feed on. Books which won’t allow a single natural normal impulse or fact of sex to go unanalyzed. Books which question every duty. Books which are merely tracts in favor of barrenness. Books written almost always by people who live abnormally. After a diet of that, can any woman live with a man wholesomely—can she keep her mind clear and fine?”
Walter shook his head—then laughed.
“Well—what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not going to do a damned thing but growl about it, I suppose. As a matter of fact I don’t care what most women do. But when I see the fakirs lay their hands on Helen—Helen, who is about as perfect a woman—” he stopped abruptly, and then went on. “I’m not a very good person to talk to on this woman question. I’m balled up, you see. I only know that the trend is dangerous. They got their inch of political equality. Now they want an ell. They don’t want to be women any longer.”