knowledge great, and the power to labour is with you, so you shall gain all
that human heart desires. To us it says--Strength shall not help you, nor
knowledge, nor labour. You shall gain what men gain, but by other means.
And so the world makes men and women.

"Look at this little chin of mine, Waldo, with the dimple in it. It is but
a small part of my person; but though I had a knowledge of all things under
the sun, and the wisdom to use it, and the deep loving heart of an angel,
it would not stead me through life like this little chin. I can win money
with it, I can win love; I can win power with it, I can win fame. What
would knowledge help me? The less a woman has in her head the lighter she
is for climbing. I once heard an old man say, that he never saw intellect
help a woman so much as a pretty ankle; and it was the truth. They begin
to shape us to our cursed end," she said, with her lips drawn in to look as
though they smiled, "when we are tiny things in shoes and socks. We sit
with our little feet drawn up under us in the window, and look out at the
boys in their happy play. We want to go. Then a loving hand is laid on
us: 'Little one, you cannot go,' they say, 'your little face will burn,
and your nice white dress be spoiled.' We feel it must be for our good, it
is so lovingly said: but we cannot understand; and we kneel still with one
little cheek wistfully pressed against the pane. Afterwards we go and
thread blue beads, and make a string for our neck; and we go and stand
before the glass. We see the complexion we were not to spoil, and the
white frock, and we look into our own great eyes. Then the curse begins to
act on us. It finishes its work when we are grown women, who no more look
out wistfully at a more healthy life; we are contented. We fit our sphere
as a Chinese woman's foot fits her shoe, exactly, as though God had made
both--and yet he knows nothing of either. In some of us the shaping of our
end has been quite completed. The parts we are not to use have been quite
atrophied, and have even dropped off; but in others, and we are not less to