Such a degradation would have
killed her. Moreover, she had no wish to be a man's chattel, or an
ornament for his drawing-room. She was accustomed to command,
accustomed to be obeyed; she could obey no man. The freedom and
independence of a man's life appealed to her; it had fostered in her a
loathing for all womanly occupations.
Her sexual instinct awoke late. As she belonged to an old family which
on her father's side, had squandered its strength in a soulless
militarism, drink and dissipation, and on her mother's had suppressed
fertility to prevent the splitting up of property, Nature seemed to
have hesitated about her sex at the eleventh hour; or perhaps had
lacked strength to determine on the continuation of the race. Her
figure possessed none of those essentially feminine characteristics,
which Nature requires for her purposes, and she scorned to hide her
defects by artificial means.
The few women friends she had, found her cold and indifferent towards
everything connected with the sex problem. She treated it with
contempt, considered the relationship between the sexes disgusting,
and could not understand how a woman could give herself to a man. In
her opinion Nature was unclean; to wear clean underlinen, starched
petticoats and stockings without holes was to be virtuous; poor was
merely another term for dirt and vice.
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