“I truly do not. I admit that ‘careers’ for women are still in a more or less experimental stage. But the results from the ancient experiment in keeping women out of careers are all in. I am curious to see the results of the more recent experiment. Professional men, as life wears on, come to look upon a career, with all its burdens, as literally the one indispensable element, without which existence would be intolerable. For ages, men have lied to their sweethearts; have deceived them into thinking sweethearts and wives are the indispensable elements in the happiness of men. But it really is not so.”
“Oh, isn’t it?”
“No. And the girls themselves are finding it out, and are very sensibly claiming a share in the substantial satisfactions of life.”
“You have no imagination. You don’t understand. It’s so simple, so perfectly simple. Substantial satisfactions for men are not substantial satisfactions for women. That is all there is to it. The things that please you and fill your lives are sawdust to us—after the first novelty wears off; and they leave our hearts aching and burning. I am certain there isn’t a mature woman in business who wouldn’t admit, if she were honest, that if the choice were open, she would choose even a moderately successful marriage in preference to a brilliant success in business. They are making a mistake—such a mistake. I am sure that, in their hearts, they know from the outset that it isn’t what their hearts desire.”
“About the hearts of young girls,” I admitted, “I know next to nothing. I am still curious about them because I have heard so much about them. But the only occasion on which I ever asked a girl for her heart, she gave me a stone. And I believe that, far oftener than most men suspect, the place in the pectoral cavity of women assigned to the heart is occupied by some far harder substance. You remember that lovely creature in Balzac whose lover overheard her in solitude exclaiming, ‘My God! O my God!’; and the words seemed to him to come from the uttermost depths of her heart and made him love her more passionately than ever, till he learned that she had merely been anxious about her stock speculations—and that the deep suspiration really came from the woman’s purse.”
Cornelia was not impressed by this reference to Balzac. She has a capable business head herself, and manages her property, which is considerable, with more judgment than her husband displays. She ignored the malice in my speech and merely remarked:—
“A nice woman need not be a fool in money matters.”
“No,” I continued, “and many of them aren’t. That is why I believe many of them are not making a mistake but following a real vocation when they turn to business. I don’t know much about their hearts, but I have had extensive opportunity to observe their brains, and, in some respects, I am tremendously impressed by them.”
“Oh, we have some common-sense among us,” she agreed.
“It isn’t common-sense so much,” I corrected, “in which girls excel. It is a special faculty of their sex, a kind of darting velocity of mind, which men of other races, the Jews and the Chinese, for example, display more abundantly than Anglo-Saxon men. In manual deftness, in celerity of apprehension, in executive readiness, in a kind of swift practical insight, in flying straight to the point, girls and young women are proving dangerous competitors. They remind me of turtle doves, which, you know, have two very different notes. They coo and coo in the woods, till you think that a mournful amorousness is all they are good for; but if you start them up, they go ‘piet, piet, piet’ at ninety miles an hour to their next destination.”