alice 🪞♥️ 🎩🐇“Our women have no influence in public affairs,” I said, quietly, after a moment.
“They haven’t? Is it possible? But didn’t I understand you to imply just now that your women were better educated than your men?”
“Well, I suppose that, taking all sorts and conditions among us, the women are as a rule better schooled, if not better educated.”
“Then, apart from the schooling, they are not more cultivated?”
“In a sense you might say they were. They certainly go in for a lot of things: art and music, and Browning and the drama, and foreign travel and psychology, and political economy and Heaven knows what all. They have more leisure for it; they have all the leisure there is, in fact; our young men have to go into business. I suppose you may say our women are more cultivated than our men; yes, I think there’s no questioning that. They are the great readers among us. We poor devils of authors would be badly off if it were not for our women. In fact, no author could make a reputation among us without them. American literature exists because American women appreciate it and love it.”
-- William Dean Howells, A Traveler from Altruria