Feminism -- Fiction; Sex role -- Fiction; Women's rights -- Fiction
Polly and Royal had had many an argument on the subject, that is, he
would begin by makin’ fun of the Suffragists and their militant doin’s,
which if he’d thought on’t wuz sunthin’ like what his old revolutionary
forbears went through for the same reasons, bein’ taxed without
representation, and bein’ burdened and punished by the law they had no
voice in making, only the Suffragettes are not nearly so severe with
their opposers, they haven’t drawed any blood yet. Why, them old
Patriots we revere so, would consider their efforts for freedom
exceedingly gentle and tame compared to their own bloody battles.
And Royal would make light of the efforts of college girls to help
workin’ girls, and the encouragement and aid they’d gin ’em when they
wuz strikin’ for less death-dealin’ hours of labor, and livin’ wages,
and so forth. I don’t see how such a really noble young man as Royal
ever come to argy that way, but spoze it wuz the dead hand of some
rough onreasonable old ancestor reachin’ up out of the shadows of the
past and pushin’ him on in the wrong direction.
So when he begun to ridicule what Polly’s heart wuz sot on, when she
felt that he wuz fightin’ agin right and justice, before they knowed it
both pairs of bright eyes would git to flashin’ out angry sparks, and
hash words would be said on both sides. That old long-buried Tory
ancestor of hisen eggin’ him on, so I spoze, and Polly’s generous
sperit rebellin’ aginst the injustice and selfishness, and mebby some
warlike ancestor of hern pushin’ her on to say hash things. ’Tennyrate
he had grown less attentive to her, and wuz bestowin’ his time and
attentions elsewhere.
And when she told him she wuz goin’ to ride in the automobile parade of
the suffragists, but really ridin’ she felt towards truth and justice
to half the citizens of the U.S., he wuz mad as a wet hen, a male wet
hen, and wuz bound she shouldn’t go.
Some men, and mebby it is love that makes ’em feel so (they say it is),
and mebby it is selfishness (though they won’t own up to it), but they
want the women they love to belong to them alone, want to rule
absolutely over their hearts, their souls, their bodies, and all their
thoughts and aims, desires, and fancies. They don’t really say they
want ’em to wear veils, and be shet in behind lattice-windowed harems,
but I believe they would enjoy it.
They want to be foot loose and heart loose themselves, but always after
Ulysses is tired of world wandering, he wants to come back and open the
barred doors of home with his own private latch-key, and find Penelope
knitting stockings for him with her veil on, waitin’ for him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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