But sometimes she couldn’t fathom her own feelings. She knew she was cleverer than the boys, yet she longed for their attention. She relished the feeling of vanquishing her father when she outran him in races around the house in the wet grass—yet as much as she wanted to defy him, she also craved his approval. If a boy misbehaved in school, his punishment was to go stand with the girls—as if that were the ultimate degradation. It was hard to make sense of it all.
