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In the end, a man has given me less recognition than he ought—and that makes me no different from all the women who stand in line thinking about their own employers, how miserly they are with compliments and how quick to take the credit.”
“That is the least of what they’d call me. It’s different for women, Ahmad—no, don’t argue, just listen. If a man smiles at me, I must smile back, or else I am a shrew. If a woman mentions she’s having a terrible day, I’m obligated to ask what the matter is, otherwise I’m arrogant and uncaring. Then I become the target of their anger, and it affects me whether I deserve it or not. If I were to act as you do, and alienate half the people I meet—how long do you think it would be before the noise grew unbearable?”
This left Morris free to spend his work hours as he preferred, thumbing through the racing papers and nursing his various grudges.
“What they ought to do is neither here nor there. Let us concentrate on what they will do. The businessmen’s wives will vote to keep their money in their own pockets. The Temperance reformers will vote to keep their husbands sober, and the barmaids will vote to protect their jobs. The Christian women will vote to close businesses on Sundays, and the Jewish women will vote to keep them open. The Negro women, I assume, still will have no vote at all—but the rest will divide themselves, just as the men have. And you will do exactly the same. You will vote your own interests, which are the
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It’s easy to consider yourself altruistic when you live among the poor and the
downtrodden. But if you were removed from their side, it wouldn’t be long before they faded from your mind.”
She’d even gone so far as to read Miss Bell’s travel memoirs, and thought them well written, if typically British in their droll condescension.
who’d throw herself on a pyre if someone wished for it and then curse herself for not burning brightly enough.
Here were men who ruled empires, men whose names meant power and consequence—and if these men chose to plant their feet firmly upon a sinking deck, then George would do the same. The pointlessness of it all took her breath away.
She couldn’t understand why some girls seemed to relish drawing their attention. One might as well call out to a wolf, and offer it one’s throat.
