| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: screaming, and she took it out so quickly--so easily!"
"How?" I asked, very curious.
"`Why, you blessed child,' she said, `you've got the wrong
idea altogether. You do not have to think that there ever was
such a God--for there wasn't. Or such a happening--for there wasn't.
Nor even that this hideous false idea was believed by anybody.
But only this--that people who are utterly ignorant will believe
anything--which you certainly knew before.'"
"Anyhow," pursued Ellador, "she turned pale for a minute
when I first said it."
This was a lesson to me. No wonder this whole nation of women
Herland |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: incessantly, and at great personal sacrifice, in the cause of
education.
Sarojini was the eldest of a large family, all of whom were
taught English at an early age. "I," she writes, "was stubborn
and refused to speak it. So one day when I was nine years old my
father punished me--the only time I was ever punished--by
shutting me in a room alone for a whole day. I came out of it a
full-blown linguist. I have never spoken any other language to
him, or to my mother, who always speaks to me in Hindustani. I
don't think I had any special hankering to write poetry as a
little child, though I was of a very fanciful and dreamy nature.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: they found reclining on a couch in a miniature chalet, surrounded by a
garden fragrant with the rarest flowers.
"That is well," said Asie, looking about her. "No one can overhear
us."
"Oh! my dear, I am half dead! Tell me, Diane, what have you done?"
cried the Duchess, starting up like a fawn, and, seizing the Duchess
by the shoulders, she melted into tears.
"Come, come, Leontine; there are occasions when women like us must not
cry, but act," said the Duchess, forcing the Countess to sit down on
the sofa by her side.
Asie studied the Countess' face with the scrutiny peculiar to those
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