be amused any more.
"The air was filled with frustrated moanings. Women maundered in front of microscopes yearning only to "surrender," and "give themselves," to adore and to be adored. The cinema most of all maintained the propaganda, persuading the main and important part of their audience, which was female, that nothing in life was worth achieving but dewyeyed passivity in the strong arms of Romance. The pressure became such that the majority of young women spent all their leisure time dreaming of Romance, and the means of securing it. They were brought to a state of honesty believing that to be owned by some man and set down in a little brick box to buy all the things that the manufacturers wanted them to buy would be the highest form of bliss that life could offer."
"But" I began to protest again. The old lady was now well launched, however, and swept on without a check.
"All this could not help distorting society, of course. The divorcerate went up. Real life simply could not come near to providing the degree of romantic glamour which was being represented as every girl's proper inheritance. There was probably, in the aggregate, more disappointment, disillusion, and dissatisfaction among women than there had ever been before. Yet, with this ridiculous and ornamented ideal grainedin by unceasing propaganda, what could a conscientious idealist do but take steps to break up the shortweight marriage she had made, and seek elsewhere for the ideal which was hers, she understood, by right?
"It was a wretched state of affairs brought about by deliberately promoted dissatisfaction; a kind of ratrace with, somewhere safely out of reach, the glamorised romantic ideal always luring. Perhaps an exceptional few almost attained it, but, for all except those very few, it was a cruel, tantalising sham on which they spent themselves, and of course their money, in vain."
This time I did get in my protest.
"But it wasn't like that. Some of what you say may be truebut that's all the superficial part. It didn't feel a bit like the way you put it. I was in it. I know."
She shook her head reprovingly.
"There is such a thing as being too close to make a proper evaluation. At a distance we are able to see more clearly. We can perceive it for what it wasa gross and heartless exploitation of the weakerwilled majority. Some women of education and resolution were able to withstand it, of course, but at a cost. There must always be a painful price for resisting majority pressureeven they could not always, altogether escape the feeling that they might be wrong, and that the ratracers were having the better time of it.
"You see, the great hopes for the emancipation of women with which the century had started had been outflanked. Purchasingpower had passed into the hands of the illeducated and highlysuggestible. The desire for Romance is essentially a selfish wish, and when it is encouraged to dominate every other it breaks down all corporate loyalties. The individual woman thus separated from, and yet at the same time thrust into competition with, all other women was almost defenceless; she became the prey of organised suggestion. When it was represented to her that the lack of certain goods or amenities would be fatal to Romance she became alarmed and, thus, eminently exploitable. She could only believe what she was told, and spent a great deal of time worrying about whether she was doing all the right things to encourage Romance. Thus, she became, in a new, a subtler way, more exploited, more dependent, and less creative than she had ever been before."
"Well," I said, "this is the most curiously unrecognisable account of my world that I have ever heardit's like something copied, but with all the proportions wrong. And as for "less creative"well, perhaps families were smaller, but women still went on having babies. The population was still increasing."
The old lady's eyes dwelt on me a moment.
"You are undoubtedly a thoughtchild of your
"The air was filled with frustrated moanings. Women maundered in front of microscopes yearning only to "surrender," and "give themselves," to adore and to be adored. The cinema most of all maintained the propaganda, persuading the main and important part of their audience, which was female, that nothing in life was worth achieving but dewyeyed passivity in the strong arms of Romance. The pressure became such that the majority of young women spent all their leisure time dreaming of Romance, and the means of securing it. They were brought to a state of honesty believing that to be owned by some man and set down in a little brick box to buy all the things that the manufacturers wanted them to buy would be the highest form of bliss that life could offer."
"But" I began to protest again. The old lady was now well launched, however, and swept on without a check.
"All this could not help distorting society, of course. The divorcerate went up. Real life simply could not come near to providing the degree of romantic glamour which was being represented as every girl's proper inheritance. There was probably, in the aggregate, more disappointment, disillusion, and dissatisfaction among women than there had ever been before. Yet, with this ridiculous and ornamented ideal grainedin by unceasing propaganda, what could a conscientious idealist do but take steps to break up the shortweight marriage she had made, and seek elsewhere for the ideal which was hers, she understood, by right?
"It was a wretched state of affairs brought about by deliberately promoted dissatisfaction; a kind of ratrace with, somewhere safely out of reach, the glamorised romantic ideal always luring. Perhaps an exceptional few almost attained it, but, for all except those very few, it was a cruel, tantalising sham on which they spent themselves, and of course their money, in vain."
This time I did get in my protest.
"But it wasn't like that. Some of what you say may be truebut that's all the superficial part. It didn't feel a bit like the way you put it. I was in it. I know."
She shook her head reprovingly.
"There is such a thing as being too close to make a proper evaluation. At a distance we are able to see more clearly. We can perceive it for what it wasa gross and heartless exploitation of the weakerwilled majority. Some women of education and resolution were able to withstand it, of course, but at a cost. There must always be a painful price for resisting majority pressureeven they could not always, altogether escape the feeling that they might be wrong, and that the ratracers were having the better time of it.
"You see, the great hopes for the emancipation of women with which the century had started had been outflanked. Purchasingpower had passed into the hands of the illeducated and highlysuggestible. The desire for Romance is essentially a selfish wish, and when it is encouraged to dominate every other it breaks down all corporate loyalties. The individual woman thus separated from, and yet at the same time thrust into competition with, all other women was almost defenceless; she became the prey of organised suggestion. When it was represented to her that the lack of certain goods or amenities would be fatal to Romance she became alarmed and, thus, eminently exploitable. She could only believe what she was told, and spent a great deal of time worrying about whether she was doing all the right things to encourage Romance. Thus, she became, in a new, a subtler way, more exploited, more dependent, and less creative than she had ever been before."
"Well," I said, "this is the most curiously unrecognisable account of my world that I have ever heardit's like something copied, but with all the proportions wrong. And as for "less creative"well, perhaps families were smaller, but women still went on having babies. The population was still increasing."
The old lady's eyes dwelt on me a moment.
"You are undoubtedly a thoughtchild of your
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