Sarah Grand

“ If men and women were kept apart, and made to live purely from their cradles, they would still scarcely be fit for marriage; yet any man thinks he may marry, and never cares to be the nobler or the better for it. And when you see that this, the only perfect state, the most sacred bond of union between man and woman, is everywhere lightly considered, don't you think there is reason in the fear that we are falling on bad times? Oh, don't quote the Romans to me, and the Inevitable. ”

“ We have no high ideals of anything. Marriage itself is a mere commercial treaty, and only professional preachers speak of it in other terms—and those young people, with a passion for each other, who are about to be united—a passion that dies the death inevitably for want of knowledge, and wholesome principle, and self-control to support it. Some of us like our bargains better than others, but you can judge of the estimation in which marriage is held when you see how much happiness people generally find in it. ”

“ One lady here has seven children—another instance of the unequal distribution of the good things of this world. She has lent me one of them to comfort me because I am jealous. He sleeps in my room, and is a fair- haired boy, with eyes that remind me of you. Will he also, when he grows up, have 'the conscience of a saint among his warring senses'? I hope not, I should think when sense and conscience are equally delicate, and apt to thrill simultaneously, life must be a burden. ”

“ Inflate themselves with some insane delight,
and would ostracise a neighbour for the first offence by ruling that one mistake must mar a life—anybody's life but their own, of course; who have no peace in themselves, no habit of sweet thought; whose lives are one long agony of excitement, objection, envy, hate, and unrest; the decently clad devils of society who may be known by their eternal carping, and who are already in torment, and doing their utmost to drag others after them. ”

“ Pity is for affliction, for such shortcomings as are hereditary and can hardly be remedied—for the taint in nature which is all but hopeless. But these people are not afflicted. They could do better if they would. They know the higher walk, and deliberately pursue the lower. Their whole feeling is for themselves, and such things as have power to move them through the flesh only. I would almost rather sin on the impulse of a generous but misguided nature, and have the power to appreciate and the will to be better, than live a perfect, loveless woman, caring only for myself, like these. ”

“ For the prayer of every woman worth the name is not 'Make me superior to my husband,' but, 'Lord, make my husband superior to me!' Is there any more pitiful position in the world than that of a right-minded woman who is her husband's superior, and knows it! There is in every educated and refined woman an inborn desire to submit, and she must do violence to what is best in herself when she cannot. You know what the history of such marriages is. The girl has been taught to expect to find a guide, philosopher, and friend in her husband. ”

“ Miserable fate which robbed her of all that would have made her life worth having—a husband on whom she could rely; her child; and now the man upon whom she had been prepared to lavish the long pent-up passion, the concentrated devotion of her great and noble nature! Poor starved heart, crushed back upon itself, suffering silently, suffering always, but never hardening—on the contrary, growing tenderer for others the more it had to endure itself! Would it always be so? Was there no peace on earth for Ideala? No one who could be all her own? ”

“ You would have society turned topsy-turvy, and all for what? Why, simply to make a wrong thing right for yourself! If your example were followed by all the unhappy people in the world, how would it end, do you think? There must be moral laws, and it is inevitable that they should press hardly on individuals occasionally; but it is clearly the duty of individuals to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community at large."
"I do not understand your morality," she said. "Do you think that, although I love another man, it would be right for me to go back and live with my husband?" ”

“ And if I give up my position in society for his sake, he is worth it, and I am content. And it is my own doing, too. I know that there cannot be one law for me and another for all the other women in the world, and if I break through a social convention I am prepared to abide by the consequences. Do you want to make me believe that his sympathy was pretended, that he deliberately planned— something I have no word to express—and would have carried out his plan absolutely in cold blood, without a spark of affection for me? It would be hard to believe it of any man ”

“ I often long to be that mummy you have in the Great Hospital, the one with the short nose and thick lips. When you looked at me spirit and flesh would grow one with delight, and I should come to life, and grow round and soft and warm again, and talk to you of Thebes, and you would be enchanted with me—you could not help it then. I should be so old, so very old, and genuine! ”