'
'There is no evil between men and women that is not a common evil,' said
Karenin. 'It is you poets, Kahn, with your love songs which turn the
sweet fellowship of comrades into this woman-centred excitement. But
there is something in women, in many women, which responds to these
provocations; they succumb to a peculiarly self-cultivating egotism.
They become the subjects of their own artistry. They develop and
elaborate themselves as scarcely any man would ever do. They LOOK for
golden canopies. And even when they seem to react against that, they may
do it still. I have been reading in the old papers of the movements
to emancipate women that were going on before the discovery of atomic
force. These things which began with a desire to escape from the
limitations and servitude of sex, ended in an inflamed assertion of sex,
and women more heroines than ever. Helen of Holloway was at last as
big a nuisance in her way as Helen of Troy, and so long as you think
of yourselves as women'--he held out a finger at Rachel and smiled
gently--'instead of thinking of yourselves as intelligent beings, you
will be in danger of--Helenism. To think of yourselves as women is
to think of yourselves in relation to men. You can't escape that
consequence. You have to learn to think of yourselves--for our sakes and
your own sakes--in relation to the sun and stars.
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