Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/307

Rh alone makes poverty bearable; and those who can get these positions are the fortunate ones. The rest are poverty-stricken, wretched, a burden to themselves and others, oppressed by the consciousness of their aimless and useless life, unable to obtain for themselves any pleasures in their youth, their bread from day to day, or a provision for their old age. And with all this, the girl who vegetates in such a terrible solitude must have superhuman principles. We require this sad, morbid, starving, shivering girl to be a heroine! Prostitution stands near, waiting for her, enticing her. She can not take a step in her solitary and joyless life, without being beset by temptation in a thousand guises. Man who avoids assuming the responsibility of providing for her for life, does not hesitate to demand her love as a present, which requires no return from him.

His sensual selfishness pursues her without intermission and is the more dangerous, as her most powerful instincts are his secret allies. She must not only voluntarily continue her life of solitude and wretchedness, not only struggle to escape-from her strong and determined antagonist, man, who is spurred on by his passions, but she must subdue her own inclinations and put down the rebellion of her normal, natural instincts against the lies and hypocrisy of society. To emerge unharmed from such a struggle requires a heroism of which hardly one man in a thousand would be capable. And the reward of this heroism? There is none. The old maid who has lived the life of a saint amid these manifold temptations, finds no recompense, no assurance in her heart of hearts that she has been obeying a law of nature by her bitter, arduous life of deprivations; on the contrary, the older she grows, the louder her heart questions: "why did I struggle? Has my victory benefited anyone? Is society with its hard, selfish