The Gentleman's Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women, #4)

by Evie Dunmore

“The trouble is, Mr. Khoury, that people aren’t interested in either logic or facts, not when it’s at cross-purposes with their convenience and convictions.

The issue isn’t a lack of proof of women’s abilities, but rather an unwillingness to recognize our contributions.

Have women a soul, they wondered in ancient Greece, and they still wonder whether we’re capable of rational thought, whether these humans who aren’t men are good for anything beyond procreation.”

Opponents of the Cause rarely changed their mind based on facts alone, but when they found just a single fact wrong in a petition, they used it to bash the credibility of the Cause

itself.

They built women’s colleges far from the ribald town centers and surrounded the dorms with walls that were topped with broken glass, but there were no walls to keep a woman safe in her own home.

It’s probably just the price everyone pays for power, but it’s my impression that women who hold their own pay double, just because they are women. I see it in people’s faces every time I hand them a pamphlet, or when I retreat for some solitude during a house party. When I exist for my own pleasure or have a conviction, it invites resentment. If queens across the ages can’t have it all, what chance do I have?”

don’t object on principle. I object to this notion that it would be my highest purpose, or my only purpose. Because I don’t think it is. I think that I . . . I matter. A woman matters, married or not, children or no children. I matter, just as I am, right now. I’m a whole human being.”