prison of
sex. Have you ever thought just all that it means when every woman in
the world goes dressed in a costume to indicate her sex, her cardinal
fact, so that she dare not even mount a bicycle in knickerbockers, she
has her hair grown long to its longest because yours is short, and
everything conceivable is done to emphasize and remind us (and you) of
the fundamental trouble between us? As if there was need of reminding!
Stephen, is there no way out of this? Is there no way at all? Because if
there is not, then I had rather go back to the hareem than live as I do
now imprisoned in glass--with all of life in sight of me and none in
reach. I had rather Justin beat me into submission and mental
tranquillity and that I bore him an annual--probably deciduous--child. I
can understand so well now that feminine attitude that implies, 'Well,
if I must have a master, then the more master the better.' Perhaps that
is the way; that Nature will not let us poor humans get away from sex,
and I am merely--what is it?--an abnormality--with whiskers of enquiry
sprouting from my mind. Yet I don't feel like that....

"I'm pouring into these letters, Stephen, the concentrated venom of
years of brooding. My heart is black with rebellion against my lot and
against the lot of woman. I have been given life and a fine position in
the world, I made one fatal blunder in marrying to make these things
secure, and now I can do nothing with it all and I have nothing to do
with it. It astounds me to think of the size of our establishments,
Stephen, of the extravagant way in which whole counties and great
countries pay tribute to pile up the gigantic heap of wealth upon which
we two lead our lives of futile entanglement. In this place alone there
are fourteen gardeners and garden helps, and this is not one of our
garden places. Three weeks ago I spent a thousand pounds on clothes in
one great week of shopping, and our yearly expenditure upon personal
effect, upon our magnificence and our margins cannot be greatly less
than forty-five thousand pounds. I walk about our house and gardens, I
take one of the carriages or one of the automobiles and go to some large
pointless gathering of hundreds and thousands and thousands of pounds,
and we walk about and say empty little things, and the servants don't
laugh at us, the butlers don't laugh at us, the people in the street
tolerate us.... It has an effect of collective insanity.... You know the
story of on