"He wished for her to have come to him out of an egg shell, somewhat more astonished at things than a chicken, but as completely enclosed before he tapped the shell, and seeing him with her sex's eyes first of all men."
In another of the late novels, the two abstractions, society
and woman, are fused in one description as,—[1]
"* * * the terrible aggregate social woman, of man's
creation, hated by him, dreaded, scorned, satirized, and nevertheless,
upheld, esteemed, applauded: a mark of civilization,
on to which our human society must hold as long as we have
nothing humaner. She exhibits virtue, with face of waxen
angel, with paw of desert beast, and blood of victims on it."
This is discrimination; the general dearth of which is
lamented by Lady Dunstane:[2]
"The English notion of women seems to be that we are born
white sheep or black; circumstances have nothing to do with
our colour. They dread to grant distinctions, and to judge of
us discerningly is beyond them."
And Lætitia, after listening to a long Patterne discourse
on feminine traits and limitations, laconically
sums up the whole matter in a compact epigram:[3]
"'The generic woman appears to have an extraordinary
faculty for swallowing the individual.'"
After this, decidedly flat and puerile falls the witticism
of Kingsley, spoken by Bracebridge in reply to Lancelot's
