Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Descriptions aren't any good when it comes to women

"This is no savage country, my friend. But no men? Boys, it behooves us to go forward most politely."

Everything was beauty, order, perfect cleanness, and the pleasantest sense of home over it all.

In all our discussions and speculations we had always unconsciously assumed that the women, whatever else they might be, would be young. Most men do think that way, I fancy.

"Woman" in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. But these good ladies were very much on the stage, and yet any one of them might have been a grandmother.

"They don't seem to notice our being men," he went on. "They treat us—well—just as they do one another. It's as if our being men was a minor incident."

"If their hair was only long," Jeff would complain, "they would look so much more feminine."

Why we should so admire "a woman's crown of hair" and not admire a Chinaman's queue is hard to explain, except that we are so convinced that the long hair "belongs" to a woman.

"When I see them knit," Terry said, "I can almost call them feminine."

"It would be so wonderful—would it not? To compare the history of two thousand years, to see what the differences are—between us, who are only mothers, and you, who are mothers and fathers, too. Of course we see, with our birds, that the father is as useful as the mother, almost. But among insects we find him of less importance, sometimes very little. Is it not so with you?"