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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: men, in whom she denied the disinterestedness she sought so eagerly.
After each disappointment in marriage, the poor lady, led to despise
mankind, began to see them all in a false light. Her character
acquired, necessarily, a secret misanthropy, which threw a tinge of
bitterness into her conversation, and some severity into her eyes.
Celibacy gave to her manners and habits a certain increasing rigidity;
for she endeavored to sanctify herself in despair of fate. Noble
vengeance! she was cutting for God the rough diamond rejected by man.
Before long public opinion was against her; for society accepts the
verdict an independent woman renders on herself by not marrying,
either through losing suitors or rejecting them. Everybody supposed
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