Without Prejudice | Page 2

and moans, weeping and
wailing and gnashing of false and genuine teeth, and tearing of hair
both artificial and natural; and therewith the flutter of a myriad fans,
and the rustle of a million powder-puffs. And the air reeked with a
thousand indescribable scents--patchouli and attar of roses and cherry
blossom, and the heavy odours of hair-oil and dyes and cosmetics and
patent medicines innumerable.
Now when the women perceived me on my reading-chair in their midst,
the shrill babel swelled to a savage thunder of menace, so that I deemed
they were wroth with me for intruding upon them in mine own house;
but as mine ear grew accustomed to the babel of tongues, I became
aware of the true import of their ejaculations.
"O son of man!" they cried, in various voices: "thy cruel reign is over,
thy long tyranny is done; thou hast glutted thyself with victims, thou
hast got drunken on our hearts' blood, we have made sport for thee in
our blindness. But the Light is come at last, the slow night has budded
into the rose of dawn, the masculine monster is in his death-throes, the
kingdom of justice is at hand, the Doll's House has been condemned by
the sanitary inspector."
I strove to deprecate their wrath, but my voice was as the twitter of a
sparrow in a hurricane. At length I ruffled my long hair to a leonine
mane, and seated myself at the piano. And lo! straightway there fell a
deep silence--you could have heard a hairpin drop.
"What would you have me do, O daughters of Eve?" I cried. "What is

my sin? what my iniquity?" Then the clamour recommenced with
tenfold violence, disappointment at the loss of a free performance
augmenting their anger.
"Give me a husband," shrieked one.
"Give me a profession," shrieked another.
"Give me a divorce," shrieked a third.
"Give me free union," shrieked a fourth.
"Give me an income," shrieked a fifth.
"Give me my deceased sister's husband," shrieked a sixth.
"Give me my divorced husband's children," shrieked a seventh.
"Give me the right to paint from the nude in the Academy schools,"
shrieked an eighth.
"Give me an Oxford degree," shrieked a ninth.
"Give me a cigar," shrieked a tenth.
"Give me a vote," shrieked an eleventh.
"Give me a pair of trousers," shrieked a twelfth.
"Give me a seat in the House," shrieked a thirteenth.
"Daughters of the horse-leech," I made answer, taking advantage of a
momentary lull, "I am not in a position to give away any of these things.
You had better ask at the Stores." But the tempest out-thundered me.
"I want to ride bareback in the Row in tights and spangles at 1 p. m. on
Sundays," shrieked a soberly clad suburban lady, who sported a
wedding-ring. "I want to move the world with my pen or the point of
my toe; I want to write, dance, sing, act, paint, sculpt, fence, row, ride,

swim, hunt, shoot, fish, love all men from young rustic farmers to old
town roués, lead the Commons, keep a salon, a restaurant, and a
zoological garden, row a boat in boy's costume, with a tenor by
moonlight alone, and deluge Europe and Asia with blood shed for my
intoxicating beauty. I am primeval, savage, unlicensed, unchartered,
unfathomable, unpetticoated, tumultuous, inexpressible, irrepressible,
overpowering, crude, mordant, pugnacious, polyandrous, sensual, fiery,
chaste, modest, married, and misunderstood."
"But, madam," I remarked--for in her excitement she approached
within earshot of me--"I understand thee quite well, and I really am not
responsible for thy emotions." Her literary style beguiled me into the
responsive archaicism of the second person singular.
"Coward!" she snapped. "Coward and satyr! For centuries thou hast
trampled upon my sisters, and desecrated womanhood."
"I beg thy pardon," I rejoined mildly.
"Thou dost not deserve it," she interrupted.
"Thou art substituting hysteria for history," I went on. "I was not born
yesterday, but I have only scored a few years more than a quarter of
one century, and seeing that my own mother was a woman, I must
refuse to be held accountable for the position of the sex."
"Sophist!" she shrieked. "It is thy apathy and selfishness that perpetuate
the evil."
Then I bethought me of my long vigils of work and thought, the slow,
bitter years in which I "ate my bread with tears, and sat weeping on my
bed," and I remembered that some of those tears were for the sorrows
of that very sex which was now accusing me of organised injustice. But
I replied gently: "I am no tyrant; I am a simple, peaceful citizen, and it
is as much as I can do to earn my bread and the bread of some of thy
sex. Life is hard enough for both sexes, without