... All that may have
been necessary but it is necessary no longer. All that has changed
and changes still very swiftly. Your future, Rachel, AS WOMEN, is a
diminishing future.'
'Karenin?' asked Rachel, 'do you mean that women are to become men?'
'Men and women have to become human beings.'
'You would abolish women? But, Karenin, listen! There is more than
sex in this. Apart from sex we are different from you. We take up
life differently. Forget we are--females, Karenin, and still we are a
different sort of human being with a different use. In some things we
are amazingly secondary. Here am I in this place because of my trick of
management, and Edith is here because of her patient, subtle hands. That
does not alter the fact that nearly the whole body of science is man
made; that does not alter the fact that men do so predominatingly make
history, that you could nearly write a complete history of the world
without mentioning a woman's name. And on the other hand we have a
gift of devotion, of inspiration, a distinctive power for truly loving
beautiful things, a care for life and a peculiar keen close eye for
behaviour. You know men are blind beside us in these last matters. You
know they are restless--and fitful. We have a steadfastness.
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