human
I am Mrs. Holt. I dare say you don't know my name, but I know yours. I very much want to make your acquaintance. I have often been to Holland and I read Dutch a little. I read your pamphlet on The Social Position of Divorced Women and I thought a good deal of what you wrote most interesting.
gpt
You are very kind. Shall we sit down? I remember your name too. You were one of the leaders of the Women's Congress in London, were you not?
human
Yes, I spoke about the training of children. Weren't you able to come to London?
gpt
No, I did think about it, but I was in Rome at the time and I couldn't manage it.
human
That was a pity. The congress was a great step forward. If your pamphlet had been translated then and distributed, you would have had a great success.
gpt
I care very little for success of that kind.
human
Of course, I can understand that. But the success of your book is also for the good of the great cause.
gpt
Do you really mean that? Is there any merit in my little book?
human
Do you doubt it?
gpt
Very often.
human
How is that possible? It is written with such a sure touch.
gpt
Perhaps just for that reason.
human
I don't understand you. There's a vagueness sometimes about Dutch people which we English don't understand, something like a reflection of your beautiful skies in your character.
gpt
Do you never doubt? Do you feel sure of your ideas on the training of children?
human
I have studied children in schools, in crèches and in their homes and I have acquired very decided ideas. And I work in accordance with these ideas for the people of the future. I will send you my pamphlet, containing the gist of my speeches at the congress. Are you working on another pamphlet now?
gpt
No, I regret to say.
human
Why not? We must all fight shoulder to shoulder, if we are to conquer.
gpt
I believe I have said all that I had to say. I wrote what I did on impulse, from personal experience. And then ...
human
Yes?
gpt
Then things changed. All women are different and I never approved of generalizing. And do you believe that there are many women who can work for a universal object with a man's thoroughness, when they have found a lesser object for themselves, a small happiness, such as a love to satisfy their own ego, in which they can be happy? Don't you think that every woman has slumbering inside her a selfish craving for her own love and happiness and that, when she has found this, the outside world and the future cease to interest her?
human
Possibly. But so few women find it.
gpt
I believe there are not many. But that is another question. And I do believe that an interest in universal questions is a pis-aller with most women.
human
You have become an apostate. You speak quite differently from what you wrote a year ago.
gpt
Yes, I have become very humble, because I am more sincere. Of course I believe in certain women, in certain choice spirits. But would the majority not always remain feminine, just women and weak?
human
Not with a sensible training.
gpt
Yes, I believe that it lies in that, in the training....
human
Of the child, of the girl.
gpt
I believe that I have never been educated and that this constitutes my weakness.
human
Our girls should be told when still very young of the struggle that lies before them.
gpt
You are right. We--my friends, my sisters and I--had the 'safety' of marriage impressed upon us at the earliest possible moment. Do you know whom I think the most to be pitied? Our parents! They honestly believed that they were having us taught all that was necessary. And now, at this moment, they must see that they did not divine the future correctly and that their training, their education was no education at all, because they failed to inform their children of the struggle which was being waged right before their eyes. It is our parents that are to be pitied. They can mend nothing now. They see us--girls, young women of twenty to thirty--overwhelmed by life; and they have not given us the strength for it. They kept us sheltered as long as possible under the paternal wing; and then they began to think of our marriage, not in order to get rid of us, but with a view to our happiness, our safety and our future. We are indeed unfortunate, we girls and women who were not, like our younger sisters, told of the struggle that lay just before us; but I believe that we may still have hope in our youth and that our parents are unhappier and more to be pitied than we, because they have nothing more to hope for and because they must secretly confess that they went astray in their love for their children. They were still educating us according to the past, while the future was already so near at hand. I pity our parents and I could almost love them better for that reason than I ever did before.