More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Kate looked down at her hands on the table, but did not cry. What good would it have done? We often think that class of woman is hard-hearted, because it does not show emotion, but what good would it do for the Kates of the world to cry? They have learned that tears do not bring relief or change of circumstance. There is no one to wipe their tears, no one to assuage their grief.
“Sweetheart,” she said, “I ain’t been the best mum to you, but this is a hard world, and I want you to know what people are like—men especially. They will lie to you as easy as blowing dandelion clocks, and that’s the best of them.” She told me so I would know, and she was right.
‘We evolved from the apes. What may we yet evolve into?
“The love of science for its own sake,” said Beatrice. “But also for the promise it holds of raising us above our limited human selves.
What could women accomplish if they did not have to continually mind their skirts, keep them from dragging in the mud or getting trampled on the steps of an omnibus? If they had pockets! With pockets, women could conquer the world!
Clothing is one means of enforcing women’s social and political subordination.
me! Religion is a tool some men use to control others.
“You’re mine, you will always be mine. You know that, Justine. You know it in your heart, where you love me, despite yourself—as I love you. Come to me now, and there will be an end to all this. Your friends will be safe, no more women will be murdered. Those murders are on your head, my love. I killed them for you, for no other reason. But if you come to me, if you love me, everything will be all right again.”
I was thinking about Goethe’s idea of the soul. It resembles the sun, which seems to go out at night, but is simply diffusing its light elsewhere and will return again when day comes. We cannot see it, but that does not mean it doesn’t exist. So, too, with the human soul. Faith is knowing that the soul is eternal, whether we see it or not—as God is.
Lying beside him at night, in the bed where my father had once lain, I thought of throwing myself off the cliff. After all, I was already dead. Surely God would not punish me? But then I thought, What if I am still Justine Moritz, with an immortal soul? A soul that belongs to God and not myself, which will one day reunite with its true Creator? No, I could not kill myself. Not while I believed myself to still be God’s creature.
Readers who remember their classical mythology will immediately realize its significance: Athena, born from the head of her father, Zeus. We do not claim the wisdom of Athena, but we identify with her dubious parentage.
