Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriageOnions, Oliver
General
Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriage
Onions, Oliver
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction
For what had Weiniger said, if the dull world would but take the wool
out of its ears and listen? Why, what but that the classification by
sexes was nothing but the roughest of approximations after all? Because
the chromosome didn't actually _show_, illogical folk had got into
the habit of saying "This is a man" and "That is a woman," largely by
force of hearing it repeated time after time. But what of the masculine
qualities in woman, the feminine qualities in man? What about Cosimo's
exquisite perceptions, Amory's own strong art? Oh no; this rough
guesswork really would not do for a generation that at last, in spite
of bandages and blinkers, had begun to see the light! Amory knew--by
herself and Cosimo, to go no further--that the sexes _did_ intermerge
and graduate. The best women to-day had brains that pierced ruthlessly
through shams (which was what brains were primarily for); and the best
men were Feminist in their sympathies. No doubt it would take a little
time for this truth to force its way into the Glenernes of the land. No
doubt Mrs. Deschamps would continue to flirt with M. Criqui, and the
unspeakable Mr. Wellcome to boast that he was wholly (not partly) the
father of his own offspring and his placid wife entirely (and without
qualification) their mother. But nobody on the look-out for signs of
the true progress turned their eyes Glenernewards. Glenerne had never
heard of the chromosome. Ten to one it would have thought it was a
mechanical piano-player. That was why Amory had left Glenerne.
And how had the world treated its Weiniger--its Nietzsche--its
Strindberg? "Mad as hatters," it said, merely because they had shot
themselves, or died in the madhouses to which it had driven them!
Yes (Amory thought), if that was the best the men could do, it was time
the women took hold!
Hungrily, hungrily she wished Cosimo was back, so that they might
discuss these things together!
But Cosimo not only remained away; he did not even write very
frequently. He appeared to wait until he had received three letters
from Amory, and then to "answer" them together, obviously with the
letters before him. Amory understood that business in connection with
his uncle's estate detained him; he was in Shropshire: and a phrase
about "running up to town presently" had read as if, even when he
should come, he would go back to Shropshire again. But he had not given
up his studio near the Vestry Hall; Amory knew that because he had sent
her the key of it and had asked her to forward his letters; and Amory
went there daily. Once she had even tried to work there, but without
much success. She had hardly expected it would answer. She had only
tried it because she had come to hate her own place so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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