"Face fiddlesticks!" Aunt Matilda's hands made an impatient gesture.
"Women have no business doing what many of them are doing today.
They are forgetting the place to which they were appointed by their
Creator. But even if you were at liberty to carry out your silly
ideas, what could you do? How could you earn your living? You play
well, paint a little, read books that do you no good, and hardly
enough of the new novels to discuss them. All this sociological
stuff, those scientific things I see in your room, are absurd for a
woman to bother with. Men dislike women who think too much and know
too much. You are well educated and clever enough, but what could
you do if you were suddenly left without means of support?"

"I don't know what I could do. It's what I want to find out. Half
of my life has been spent in school and college, and during these
years I was taught little that would be of practical service in case
of need. I'd like to use part of my time trying to make educators
understand they don't educate. For cultural purposes, for acquiring
knowledge of facts, their system may be admirable, but for the
pursuit of a happy livelihood--"

I stopped. Aunt Matilda was looking at me as if I were suffering
from an attack of some kind. Marriage to her was the divinely
arranged destiny for a woman, and she had neither patience nor
sympathy with my refusal to accept the opportunity that was mine to
fulfil the destiny of my sex and at the same time become the wife of
the man she had long wished me to marry. The power of money was dear
to her. She understood it well, and my failure to appreciate it
properly was peculiarly exasperating to her. Discussion was useless.
It never got farther than where it started. If I said that which I
wanted much to say, it would merely mean hearing again what I did not