Ik wist niet, zo schreef ik, dat het 'praatpapier' van onze godgeleerde denker een opgewarmde prak was.
Hoezeer opgewarmd ontdekte ik pas, toen ik begon aan 'White Rose of Weary Leaf' van Violet Hunt, een roman uit -- nota bene! -- 1908.
Hieruit enkele kenmerkende passages.
(De jonge vrouw Dulce -- niet moeders mooiste, zij weet dat zij alleen aan de man kan komen, omdat haar vader haar de enorme bruidsschat van 50.000 Britse ponden meegeeft -- zoekt steun bij haar gouvernante, de vrijgevochten Amy, die in haar vrije tijd lezingen houdt voor een soort 'Genootschap tot bevrijding en verheffing der vrouw'.)
‘I knew I could talk to you. You have no tiresome prejudices, you are a-moral, like me. Nothing shocks me. I let people rave. They don't rave here, alas! One never hears a nice naked truth from one year's end to another. But you — why, you are up to everything. And you can give a perfectly gorgeous lecture. I shall never forget that one I heard and that brought us together again. For one thing, I could see that you took such a perfectly reasonable view of the relations of the sexes.’
' Oh, the relations between the sexes ,' said Amy contemptuously. ‘That's just the part that bores me. People do seem to me to attach far too much importance to it all. Animals don't, except for a short while in spring. Why can't we be sensible like them, and not base all our actions and ambitions and well-being on the fact of our mating and whether we have mated right or not? Don't you suppose the man nightingale makes the best of it, and if she isn't quite the right little brown bird he would have liked to sing to, just shrugs his shoulders and says, " Sufficient for the season is the mate thereof " ? '
(wordt vervolgd)
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