Mzilikazi

“ Many women have, unhappily, made some such discovery as this, but for most women there is some distracting occupation. Had it been Sylvia's fate to live in the midst of fashion and society, she would have found relief in the conversation of the witty, or the homage of the distinguished. ”

“ The fairness of Isabella's complexion was regarded with envy by the servants as well as by the mistress herself. This is one of the hard features of slavery. To-day a woman is mistress of her own cottage; to-morrow she is sold to one who aims to make her life as intolerable as possible. And let it be remembered that the house-servant has the best situation a slave can occupy. ”

“ I would give you a wrong idea of Sylvia if I did not make clear that along with this sophistication as to the play-aspects of sex, there went the most incredible ignorance as to its practical realities. In my arguments I had thought to appeal to her by referring to that feature of wage-slavery which more than even child-labour stirs the moral sense of women, but to my utter consternation I discovered that here was a woman nearly a year married who did not know what prostitution was. ”

“ I am not a handmaiden, but a woman who is her own mistress. If ye will do what I tell you I will pray to God to guide you out of this tribulation”; and they said, “We will do what thou tellest us to do.” And she said unto them, “This man who sold me did so because I would not let him lie with me; this is an act which God doth not desire.” And all the men brought out money, ten thousand dinars, and they gave it to the man who had bought her, and he set her free. ”

“ You are no married woman, young lady: you are still a maiden. I have looked into the eyes of many girls and women: I know which is which. A girl's eye lurks beneath the eyelids, as if she were looking always out of an ambuscade, as if she were always afraid somebody would notice her. A woman's eye always flashes as if she were looking for somebody. When a girl says in jest 'I am a married woman,' she blushes: if she were a woman, she would smile. You are certainly still unmarried, young lady." [Pg 354]
Czipra was annoyed at having opened a conversation with her. ”

“ French began to show to Isabella that she was anything but a pleasant and agreeable mistress. What social virtues are possible in a society of which injustice is a primary characteristic,—in a society which is divided into two classes, masters and slaves? Every married woman at the South looks upon her husband as unfaithful, and regards every negro woman as a rival. ”

“ Those who fill such exalted stations as that of the wife of the Viceroy of Egypt, know no solitude, not even in their private apartments. The slaves now gather around her, fall on their knees, and swear to serve her faithfully, and her first maid asks if her gracious mistress will now retire to the toilet-chamber to change her dress. She dares not refuse, and allows herself to be conducted thither, where the most splendid garments lie in readiness for her. She makes no selection, but permits her women to dress her as they think proper. ”

“ Cecilia, have you then no faith in me, my courage, my strength, my judgment? And I too cannot tell you all, how I intend to save you, will save you; I must beg you to let me take my own way, without explanation. Is not what is fair for women, right for men? May not cases occur for us also, in which we act as duty and honor command, and which we can confide only to a man? ”

“ Lizzie kicked the clothes from her indignantly. She would not even unroll the bundle to see what it contained, but cowered down upon the couch, feeling herself insulted and outraged, and for the first time suspecting the good intentions of the woman in whose power she had placed herself. She would go away from them, if she was to be treated like this, she thought—she so soon to be a lady to have her clothes taken away from her. ”

“ SILVIA. Too low a mistress for so high a servant.
PROTEUS. Not so, sweet lady; but too mean a servant
To have a look of such a worthy mistress.
VALENTINE. Leave off discourse of disability;
Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant.
PROTEUS. My duty will I boast of, nothing else.
SILVIA. And duty never yet did want his meed.
Servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress.
PROTEUS. I'll die on him that says so but yourself.
SILVIA. That you are welcome?
PROTEUS. That you are worthless.
Re-enter THURIO
THURIO. Madam, my lord your father would speak with you. ”

“ Henceforth, if Georgiana were removed to another planet, I
would rather worship her there simply as my evening or morning star
than coexist with any earthly woman. One thought besets me: did she
realize that perhaps she herself was the cause of my misdemeanors with
Sylvia? Has she the penetration to discover that when a woman is
engaged to a man she cannot deny him all things except at her own peril? ”

“ I learned all that Sylvia had been taught on the subject of the male animal; I opened that amazing unwritten volume of woman traditions, the maxims of Lady Dee Lysle.
Sylvia’s maternal great-aunt had been a great lady out of a great age, and incidentally a grim and grizzled veteran of the sex-war. Her philosophy started from a recognition of the physical and economic inferiority of woman, as complete as any window-smashing suffragette could have formulated, but her remedy for it was a purely individualist one, the leisure-class woman’s skill in trading upon her sex. ”

“ See’st thou in snowy dishabille the lovely woman? [146] with what heart-felt glee the frolicking, half-naked child, with chubby arms, almost suffocates in its little embrace her neck, its golden ringlets mingling like streams of light ’mid her dark tresses,—with what ecstasy she enfolds him in her embraces, with maternal lips pressing in exquisite delight the plump alabaster shoulders? Lady, such scenes, not gloomy walls, invite thee—nay ’tis not the voice of the Tempter—’tis not, as they will tell thee, the poisonous breath of the many-coloured serpent stealing o’er thy senses. ”

“ And that is the problem that women have to face. It is a fact that the women of our family have always ruled the men; but they’ve done it by indirection—nobody ever thought seriously of “women’s rights” in Castleman County. But you see, women have rights; and somehow or other they will fool the men, or else the men must give up the idea that they are the superior sex, and have the right, or the ability, to rule women.’
“Then I saw how little he had followed me. ‘There has to be a head to the family,’ he said. ”

“ Before the silence was again broken the murmur of voices told them that the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia, walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the remainder of womanhood. Good women—those mistaken females who move in an atmosphere of ostentatious good works—usually walk like this. ”

“ That is the veil question, and this is the way it stands at present.
Such things may seem trifling and ridiculous. But it is a well-known fact that a silly woman is sometimes able to exercise a powerful influence over a man not half as silly, and the class of “unconquered” above described is undoubtedly in a great measure composed of individuals that are apt to be influenced by silly women. It has frequently been said that, had it not been for the spirit of Southern women, the rebellion would have broken down long ago, and there is, no doubt, a grain of truth in it. ”

“ I believe in woman’s suffrage, I even argue in approval of window-smashing. I believe that women ought to earn their own living, and be independent and free from any man’s control. I am a divorced woman—I left my husband because I wasn’t happy with him, what’s more, I believe that any woman has a right to do the same—I’m liable to teach such ideas to Sylvia, and to urge her to follow them. ”

“ We shall win you to it, dear child; when you see what it is, your prejudice will wear away." [Pg 376]
"Prejudice!" cried Missy, passionately. "What is not prejudice? Yours and St. John's have cost me dear. Oh, mamma, how could you have had such an alien child? Why must we see everything in such a different light? You and St. John are always of one mind. I am shut out from you by such a wall. I am so lonely, so wretched, and perhaps you can't understand enough to pity me. Oh, mamma, you are all I have in the world! ”

“ Her mistress was a very Inefficient woman, free from the jealousy commonly excited among Southern ladies by the presence of slaves superior to themselves in personal attractions or mental capacities. The consequence was, this woman exercised far more sway than she did herself, and was naturally proud spirited and sensitive. The defiant look she cast when ordered to take the stand roused the passions of a Southern slave-dealer who had often seen her and tried to obtain her of her master, and he determined now to have her in his power to conquer. ”

“ Sometimes, when the merits of the woman movement were discussed, its opponents made it their trump that the female sex is without any inventive spirit and that this want should be regarded as a convincing evidence for the inferiority of woman's mind. That this assertion was never true at all, but made in absolute ignorance of the real facts, becomes evident, when we recall, that primeval and aboriginal women have been the inventors of our most important industries, of agriculture, weaving, basketry, pottery, tannery, brewing, and many other peaceful arts. ”

“ She had used all the art of a logician to impress upon me the conviction that Sylvia was a life sister, and could be nothing else. Was it possible—I scarcely dared to ask myself the question—that she had used the arts of a woman to intimate to me that she might be something else? It did not cross my mind for an instant that anything that Mother Anastasia had said to me, or anything that could be deduced from her manner, was in the slightest degree out of the way. A woman has a right to indicate her position in regard to a fellow-being, and in this age she generally does indicate it. ”

“ Her glance shifted and fell. There were some things she could not put into words.
“That’s book talk, Sylvia. Come out into the open. I know what the female nature is. You’re all alike. You all know when to lower your eyes and lift your fan and back into a corner. That’s the female’s job, just as it’s the male’s job to be bold and rough. But you all know to a hair how far to carry that sort of thing. You always stop in plenty of time to get caught.” ”

“ Last night you did my sister, the Princess of Favara, the honour of paying her your addresses in the recognised Sicilian fashion of appealing to the lady herself in the first instance, to know if your attentions would be acceptable. I may tell you that the ladies of a house like ours, if our possessions are diminished, do not make their decision in so brief a period—though this is nothing unusual for people of no family. ”

“ Oh, this eternal babble of the sexes! [Throws book down.] Why can’t a woman be content to be a woman? What does she want to make a beastly man of herself for?
SYLVESTER.
But my wife isn’t a woman.
COLONEL.
None of them are, my boy. A woman, who is a woman, doesn’t want to be anything else. These people are a sex of their own, Sylvester. They have invented a new gender. And to think my nephew’s one of them!
[Strides up and down, seizes another antimacassar and flings it into another corner.
[Pg 10]
SYLVESTER.
Oh, he’s young. Don’t despair! ”

“ My sisters were rapidly developing into remarkably handsome fine young women, especially Mary, who, having the advantage of a year and a half over Lizzie, was naturally more filled out and formed, although Lizzie promised in the end to be, and in fact became, the finest woman, and had also by far the hotter temperament of the two. We passed the night in orgies the most refined, interspersed with tears of regret at our parting, and soft endearments leading to perfect furies of lubricity, until I was nearly fainting with exhaustion. ”

“ And she talked of the splendid silk dresses she would wear, and the number of servants and carriages she would keep, and the grand things she would do for all her friends by and by, until the silly girl's head was completely turned; which was exactly what the artful woman designed, for this would enable her to carry out the plan she had formed when she first saw Lizzie, and the discontent on her face told her she was dissatisfied with her lot in life, and ready to incur any risks to change it. ”

“ They might as well not be, as cease to be what they are by nature and custom. ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?’ Neither do these wretched persons find any satisfaction or consciousness of their power, but in being a plague and a torment to themselves and every one else as long as they can. A good sort of woman is a character more rare than any of these, but it is equally durable. ”

“ As a general rule the manner and look of the women is as of persons who know they have rights and a position, and who habitually make themselves heard in the family councils. Often I have been aware of the idea in a man’s mind which in English might be expressed by “I must ask the Missis,” and often it is bluntly put into words. Indeed, among these Northern tribes the women have a remarkable freedom, too much for the characters of many of them, as some subsequent anecdotes shew. ”