are not meant to grow up for any other purpose than continued production—if the raw material is not to be used?"
"It may be true to a certain extent," Jenny said, smiling.
"I know it is. I have seen enough of women to know, ever since I was a youngster and went to the workers' academy. I remember a girl at one of the English classes; she wanted to learn the language to be able to talk to the sailors on the foreign men-of-war. The only aim of the girls that counted for anything was to get a situation in England or America. We boys studied because we wanted to learn something for the sake of mental gymnastics and to complete as much as possible what we had learnt at school. The girls read novels.
"Take socialism, for instance. Do you think any woman has an idea what it really means, unless she has a husband who has taught her to see? Try to explain to a woman why the community must arrive at such a stage that every child born must have the opportunity to cultivate its faculties, if it has any, and to live its life in liberty and beauty—if it can bear liberty and has a sense of beauty. Women believe that liberty means no work and no restrictions as to their behaviour. Sense of beauty they have none; they only want to dress up in the ugliest and most expensive things, because they are the fashion. Look at the homes they arrange. The richer, the uglier. Is there any fashion, be it ever so ugly or indecent, that they don't adopt if they can afford it? You cannot deny it.
"I won't mention their morals, because they haven't any. Let alone your treatment of us men, the way you treat one another is disgusting."
Jenny smiled. She thought he was right in some things and wrong in others, but she was not inclined to discuss them. Yet she felt she ought to say something:
"Aren't you rather hard on us?" she ventured.
