16
CRAIG’S WIFE
- at all, Aunt Harriet, unless I were at least in love with the man.
- [Mrs. Craig gives a little smile of pained amusement, and moves towards Ethel.
Mrs. Craig
- That is your age, Ethel darling: we all pass through that. It’s the snare of romance,—that the later experience of life shows us to have been nothing more than the most impractical sentimentality. (She arranges the piano scarf more precisely) Only the majority of women are caught with the spell of it, unfortunately; and then they are obliged to revert right back to the almost primitive feminine dependence and subjection that they’ve been trying to emancipate themselves from for centuries.
- [She crosses to the big chair at the left of the center table and straightens it.
Ethel
- Well, you married, Aunt Harriet.
Mrs. Craig (leaning on the back of the chair)
- But not with any romantic illusions, dear. I saw to it that my marriage should be a way toward emancipation for me. I had no private fortune like you, Ethel; and no special equipment,—outside of a few more or less inapplicable college theories. So the only road to independence for me, that I could see, was through the man I married. I know that must sound extremely materialistic to you, after listening to the professor of romantic languages;—but it isn’t really; because it isn’t financial independence that I speak of particularly. I knew that would come—as the result of another kind of independence; and that is the independence of
