Blogs > Liberty and Power > Name the Mystery Feminist

May 19, 2006

Name the Mystery Feminist




[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

Who wrote the following passages?

1. If he loves you in the right way he’ll not stop you. You were just made for the stage, Anne, and if anyone interferes with your career now you’d never forgive him in after years – you’d always be thinking of what you might have achieved. ... Suppose you didn’t like the motion picture business and made him give up his theaters? He’d always brood about that and be unhappy. You’ll be unhappy if you can’t go ahead with your work, that you love. In either event an unhappy home will result, but if he keeps his beloved picture houses and you stay on the stage you’re both happy in your work, and that’s a longer stride toward mutual happiness than starting out on your married life with one of you harboring a regret that may easily grow into a chronic condition of discontent and unhappiness.

2. That is a question that should never arise between two people unselfishly in love with one another. The man would never make it necessary for her to choose – he would encourage her. ... After all, happiness is all that counts in life. There isn’t so much of it running around loose in the world that a man can afford to deny his wife the right to win it in any clean and decent way that she sees fit.

3. If you mean [I should stay] in the kitchen, then I can tell you that [no] woman with a nervous organization higher than a cow’s, is ever satisfied with that. Lots of us have to do it, but that does not mean that we like it and I’ll be darned if I’m going to peel potatoes and swat flies all the rest of my life when I have the brains and the chance to do something else .... I want to think for myself and use the brains the Lord gave me ... I want to rise above the mediocrity of a household drudge ....

4. You say that you love us. You say that you want homes and wives. All you love is your own selfish comforts and desires. ... Your idea of home is a breeding plant. ... Your ideas of marital happiness start and end with yourselves – and having babies. If you have what you want – everything your own way – why, then, marriage is a blessing. You want us to sit at home without an interest in the world that we can call our very own – and raise children. ... I intend to have children; but I do not intend to devote my body and soul and mind exclusively to the business of breeding.
Read the answer.


comments powered by Disqus