to me? I'm me, aren't I? Got a right to live, haven't I? Why should I be
somebody's servant all my life? I _won't!_ If Alf doesn't want to marry
Emmy, he can go and whistle somewhere else. There's plenty of girls
who'd jump at him. But just because I don't, he'll worry me to death. If
I was to be all over him--see Alf sheer off! He'd think there was
something funny about me. Well, there is! I'm Jenny Blanchard; and I'm
going to keep Jenny Blanchard. If I've got no right to live, then
nobody's got any right to keep me from living. If there's no rights,
other people haven't got any more than I have. They can't make me do
anything--by any right they've got. People--managing people--think that
because there isn't a corner of the earth they haven't collared they can
tell you what you've got to do. Give you a ticket and a number, get up
at six, eat so much a day, have six children, do what you're told. That
may do for some people; but it's slavery. And I'm not going to do it.
See!" She began to shout in her excited indignation. "See!" she cried
again. "Just because I'm poor, I'm to do what I'm told. They seem to
think that because they like to do what they're told, everybody ought to
be the same. They're afraid. They're afraid of themselves--afraid of
being left alone in the dark. They think everybody ought to be
afraid--in case anybody should find out that they're cowards! But I'm
not afraid, and I'm not going to do what I'm told.... I won't!"

In a frenzy she walked about the room, her eyes glittering, her face
flushed with tumultuous anger. This was her defiance to life. She had
been made into a rebel through long years in which she had unconsciously
measured herself with others. Because she was a human being, Jenny
thought she had a right to govern her own actions. With a whole
priesthood against her, Jenny was a rebel against the world as it
appeared to her--a crushing, numerically overwhelming pressure that
would rob her of her one spiritual reality--the sense of personal