The idea
that she was weak revolted all history; it was a palaeontological
falsehood that even an Eocene female monkey would have laughed
at; but it was surely true that, if her force were to be diverted
from its axis, it must find a new field, and the family must pay
for it. So far as she succeeded, she must become sexless like the
bees, and must leave the old energy of inertia to carry on the
race.
The story was not new. For thousands of years women had
rebelled. They had made a fortress of religion -- had buried
themselves in the cloister, in self-sacrifice, in good works --
or even in bad. One's studies in the twelfth century, like one's
studies in the fourth, as in Homeric and archaic time, showed her
always busy in the illusions of heaven or of hell -- ambition,
intrigue, jealousy, magic -- but the American woman had no
illusions or ambitions or new resources, and nothing to rebel
against, except her own maternity; yet the rebels increased by
millions from year to year till they blocked the path of
rebellion. Even her field of good works was narrower than in the
twelfth century. Socialism, communism, collectivism,
philosophical anarchism, which promised paradise on earth for
every male, cut off the few avenues of escape which capitalism
had opened to the woman, and she saw before her only the future
reserved for machine-made, collectivist females.
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