head and folding her arms with an
air of decision. "You are not a woman. You may try--but you can never
imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to
suffer the slavery of being a girl. To have a pattern cut out--'this is
the Jewish woman; this is what you must be; this is what you are wanted
for; a woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must
be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as
cakes are, by a fixed receipt.' That was what my father wanted. He
wished I had been a son; he cared for me as a make-shift link. His
heart was set on his Judaism. He hated that Jewish women should be
thought of by the Christian world as a sort of ware to make public
singers and actresses of. As if we were not the more enviable for that!
That is a chance of escaping from bondage."

"Was my grandfather a learned man?" said Deronda, eager to know
particulars that he feared his mother might not think of.

She answered impatiently, putting up her hand, "Oh, yes,--and a clever
physician--and good: I don't deny that he was good. A man to be admired
in a play--grand, with an iron will. Like the old Foscari before he
pardons. But such men turn their wives and daughters into slaves. They
would rule the world if they could; but not ruling the world, they
throw all the weight of their will on the necks and souls of women. But
nature sometimes thwarts them. My father had no other child than his
daughter, and she was like himself."

She had folded her arms again, and looked as if she were ready to face
some impending attempt at mastery.

"Your father was different. Unlike me--all lovingness and affection. I
knew I could rule him; and I made him secretly promise me, before I
married him, that he would put no hindrance in the way of my being an
artist. My father was on his deathbed when we were married: from the
first he had fixed his mind on my marrying my cousin Ephraim. And when
a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half
her strength must be concealment. I meant to have my will in the end,
but I could only have it by seeming to obey. I had an awe of my
father--always I had had an awe of him: it was impossible to help it. I
hated to feel awed--I wished I could have defied him openly; but I
never could. It was what I could not imagine: I could not act it to
myself that I should begin to defy my father openly and succeed. And I
never would risk failure."