This Freedom

CONTENTS





PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN

PART TWO--HOUSE OF WOMEN

PART THREE--HOUSE OF CHILDREN

PART FOUR--HOUSE OF CARDS






PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN

CHAPTER I





Rosalie's earliest apprehension of the world was of a mysterious
and extraordinary world that revolved entirely about her father
and that entirely and completely belonged to her father. Under her
father, all males had proprietory rights in the world and dominion
over it; no females owned any part of the world or could do anything
with it. All the males in this world--her father, and Robert and
Harold her brothers, and all the other boys and men one sometimes
saw--did mysterious and extraordinary things; and all the females
in this world--her mother, and Anna and Flora and Hilda her sisters,
and Ellen the cook and Gertrude the maid--did ordinary and unexciting
and generally rather tiresome things. All the males were like story
books to Rosalie: you never knew what they were going to do next;
and all the females were like lesson books: they just went on and
on and on.

Rosalie always stared at men when she saw them. Extraordinary and
wonderful creatures who could do what they liked and were always
doing mysterious and wonderful things, especially and above all
her father.

Being with her father was like being with a magician or like watching
a conjuror on the stage. You never knew what he was going to do
next. Whatever he suddenly did was never surprising in the sense of
being startling, for (this cannot be emphasised too much) nothing
her father did was ever surprising to Rosalie; but it was surprising
in the sense of being absorbingly wonderful and enthralling. Even
better than reading when she first began to read, and far better
than anything in the world before the mysteries in books were
discoverable, Rosalie liked to sit and stare at her father and
think how wonderful he was and wonder what extraordinary thing he
would do next. Everything belonged to him. The whole of life was
ordered with a view to what he would think about it. The whole
of life was continually thrown off its balance and whirled into
the most entrancing convulsions by sudden activities of this most
wonderful man.

Entrancing convulsions! Wonderful, wonderful father with a bull
after him! Why, that was her very earliest recollection of him!
That showed you how wonderful he was! Father, seen for the first
time (as it were) flying before a bull! Bounding wildly across a
field towards her with a bull after him! Wonderful father! Did her
mother ever rush along in front of a bull? Never. Was it possible
to imagine any of the women she knew rushing before a bull? It
was not possible. To see a woman rushing before a bull would have
alarmed Rosalie for she would have felt it was unnatural; but for
her father to be bounding wildly along in front of a bull seemed
to her perfectly natural and ordinary and she was not in the least
alarmed; only, as always, enthralled.