| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: as if we were not separate couples, with our separate joys and
sorrows, but our positions as aliens drove us together constantly.
The whole strange experience had made our friendship more
close and intimate than it would ever have become in a free and
easy lifetime among our own people. Also, as men, with our
masculine tradition of far more than two thousand years, we were a unit,
small but firm, against this far larger unit of feminine tradition.
I think I can make clear the points of difference without a too
painful explicitness. The more external disagreement was in the
matter of "the home," and the housekeeping duties and pleasures
we, by instinct and long education, supposed to be inherently
Herland |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: lets a woman climb just so high up the mountain of success. And
then, when she gets too cocky, when she begins to measure her
wits and brain and strength against that of men, and finds
herself superior, he just taps her smartly on the head and shins,
so that she stumbles, falls, and rolls down a few miles on the
road she has traveled so painfully. He does it just as a gentle
reminder to her that she's only a woman, after all. Oh, I know
all about this feminist talk. But this thing's been proven.
Look at what happened to--to Joan of Arc, and Becky Sharp, and
Mary Queen of Scots, and--yes, I have been spending my evenings
reading. Now, stop laughing at your old Ethel, Emma McChesney!"
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: times I have been duped, and should have blushed for myself had it
been otherwise; I secretly prided myself on acting in good faith,
although this lowered me in the eyes of others. As a matter of fact
the world has a considerable respect for cleverness, whatever form it
takes, and success justifies everything. So the world was pleased to
attribute to me all the good qualities and evil propensities, all the
victories and defeats which had never been mine; credited me with
conquests of which I knew nothing, and sat in judgment upon actions of
which I had never been guilty. I scorned to contradict the slanders,
and self-love led me to regard the more flattering rumors with a
certain complacence. Outwardly my existence was pleasant enough, but
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