Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/176

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156
Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook

possesses herself. In the past men have set a barrier to her right of knowledge, her right of action, her right of independent being; and in the light of that history it seems probable that she will best discover her full value by insisting on right of knowledge, on right of way, and on right of economic independence. So long as convention lays upon women any special and fundamental claim of control—a claim altogether different in kind and extent from the claim it lays upon men—so long may it be the essentially womanly duty of every woman to have quick and alive within her the spirit of criticism, and latent within her blood the spirit of revolt.