human
But, after all, why mince matters?
gpt
Why indeed?
human
I think, she said,
gpt
It is the _spade_ that is ugly, not the name.
human
But, my dear?
gpt
Oh, it is not a question of squeamishness, it is the insult of the thing. One insult after another, and everyone stands round, looking respectable.
human
It is the hideous mixture of the delicately civilized with the brutally savage that makes one sick. A frankly barbarous ceremony, where there was no pretence of refinement and propriety and so forth, would be infinitely less revolting.
gpt
Which your language is plain,
human
I hope so. Didn't you see how it all hurt that poor girl? One of her training too--suspended in mid air--not an earthward glance. You know Mrs. Jordan's views on the education of girls. Poor girls. They are morally skinned, in such a way as to make contact with Fact a veritable torture, and then suddenly they are sent forth defenceless into Life to be literally curry-combed.
gpt
They adjust themselves,
human
Adjust themselves! Hadria vindictively flicked off the head of a dandelion with her parasol.
gpt
They awake to find they have been living in a Fool's Paradise--a little upholstered corner with stained glass windows and rose-coloured light. They find that suddenly they are expected to place in the centre of their life everything that up to that moment they have scarcely been allowed even to know about; they find that they must obediently veer round, with the amiable adaptability of a well-oiled weather-cock. Every instinct, every prejudice must be thrown over. All the effects of their training must be instantly overcome. And all this with perfect subjection and cheerfulness, on pain of moral avalanches and deluges, and heaven knows what convulsions of conventional nature!
human
There certainly is some curious incongruity in our training,
gpt
Incongruity! Think what it means for a girl to have been taught to connect the idea of something low and evil with that which nevertheless is to lie at the foundation of all her after life. That is what it amounts to, and people complain that women are not logical.
human
Fortunately things work better in practice than might be expected, judging them in the abstract. How bashful Professor Theobald seems suddenly to have become! Why doesn't he join us, I wonder? However, so much the better; I do like to hear you talk heresy.
gpt
I do more than talk it, I _mean_ it, said Hadria.
human
I fail utterly to get at the popular point of view.
gpt
But you misrepresent it--there _are_ modifying facts in the case.
human
I don't see them. Girls are told: 'So and so is not a nice thing for you to talk about. Wait, however, until the proper signal is given, and then woe betide you if you don't cheerfully accept it as your bounden duty.' If _that_ does not enjoin abject slavishness and deliberate immorality of the most cold-blooded kind, I simply don't know what does.
gpt
How we ever came to have tied ourselves into such an extraordinary mental knot is what bewilders me, Hadria continued,
human
Chiefly, perhaps, because women won't speak out,
gpt
They have been so drilled, cried Hadria,
human
Tom-boy bells, Hadria called them. They seemed to tumble over one another and pick themselves up again, and give chase, and roll over in a heap, and then peal firmly out once more, laughing at their romping digression, joyous and thoughtless and simple-hearted.
gpt
Evidently without the least notion what they are celebrating,