The emancipated women may enjoy rank, wealth,
position, nay, even knowledge; they may know French and play on the organ but
what then? They do not know what to do with themselves. They rush here and
there among outward things, pushing, carrying dragging, busy tying this knot
and untying the other, blaming this person and cursing another. They sulk, they
sneer, they scold, and complain bitterly against all and sundry that the
elements are unfriendly and they are not having a nice time. They waste their
emotions on vulgar trivialities, and the frippery and the tinsel absorb all
their energies. When they escape into solitude, they have a strained, harassed,
haunted, nervous look. A nameless sadness weights them down and they become
delirious and deranged when the shocks and the outrages of life overtake them,
life has become what we see in pictures and cinemas—an idiot’s tale, full of
pain and piffle, which signifies nothing. It has not living sense of purpose,
liberty from external restrictions is not enough. A state of things in which every
day is free to do what he likes, read what he likes, is infinitely more
dangerous than one in which everybody is kept in bondage by social codes and church dignitaries. (206
words)