In one of our conversations you reverted to your novel, and questioned my view of the impossibility of the heroine being happy in her marriage, evidently influenced, but not convinced, by my opinion.
“To me it is perfectly conceivable,” you argued, “that, regardless of her loving, a woman can be as happy married as single, and that it all depends upon what she makes of her own life.”
“But in marriage,” I contended, “she is not free to make her life at all.”
“Surely she is if her husband truly loves her.”
“Less so than if he does not.”
“You are not in earnest?”
“Yes. Love makes women less selfish, but with many men it often has the opposite effect. The man you drew, Miss Walton, was so firm that he would not be other than selfish, and if my reading of your heroine is correct, she was a woman who would resign her own will, rather than lower her self-respect by conflicts with her husband.”
“But he loved her.”
“In a selfish man’s way. If women knew better what that meant, there would be fewer unhappy marriages.”
“Then you are sure my heroine did wrong?”