| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: mechanical labours of the past; granting all this, may there not be one
aspect of the question left out of consideration which may reverse all
conclusions as to the desirability, and the human good to be attained by
woman's enlarged freedom and her entering into the new fields of toil?
What if, the increased culture and mental activity of woman necessary for
her entrance into the new fields, however desirable in other ways for
herself and the race, should result in a diminution, or in an absolute
abolition of the sexual attraction and affection, which in all ages of the
past has bound the two halves of humanity together? What if, though the
stern and unlovely manual labours of the past have never affected her
attractiveness for the male of her own society, nor his for her; yet the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: sum at Vendome, where everybody is thrifty, and where social habits
are restrained within the bounds of a simplicity worthy of all praise,
and the foundation perhaps of a form of true happiness which no
Parisian would care for.
"For some time past Monsieur de Merret had been satisfied to ask
Rosalie whether his wife was in bed; on the girl's replying always in
the affirmative, he at once went to his own room, with the good faith
that comes of habit and confidence. But this evening, on coming in, he
took it into his head to go to see Madame de Merret, to tell her of
his ill-luck, and perhaps to find consolation. During dinner he had
observed that his wife was very becomingly dressed; he reflected as he
La Grande Breteche |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: of nature any more clement than the doings of the sky. For we
passed through a stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with
brush, but handsomely enough diversified with factory chimneys. We
landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, and there smoked a
pipe in a flaw of fair weather. But the wind blew so hard, we
could get little else to smoke. There were no natural objects in
the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops. A group of children
headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a little distance
all the time we stayed. I heartily wonder what they thought of us.
At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing-place
being steep and high, and the launch at a long distance. Near a
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