Jane and Prudence

by Barbara Pym

Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things—enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn’t matter which.

Prudence thanked him, experiencing that feeling of contrition which comes to all of us when we have made up our minds to dislike people for no apparent reason and they then perform some kind action.

‘That sort of thing shouldn’t really be necessary for Christians,’ she began firmly; ‘if we believe, as we should…’ But then, she thought, weren’t we all, even the most intelligent of us, like children fearing to go into the dark, no better than primitive peoples with their ancestor cults, the way we went to the cemetery on a Sunday afternoon, bearing bunches of flowers?

‘Yes,’ Miss Doggett agreed. ‘One does feel that men need company more than women do. A woman has a thousand and one little tasks in the house, and then her knitting or sewing.’ Jane, who did not seem to have these things, made no answer.