‘You want to walk in the village and hold my hand. And when people are cruel, you want me to love you even more. Do I hurt you? You pathetic creature. How can you imagine that I could care for you? Does that face belong alongside this? Doesn’t the world smile on us? Don’t we make a beautiful couple, ‘thee and me’? Shall we wander the pasture and recite your fucking poetry to the fucking cows. You are blind… like all other men.’
‘And you are unlike all other women.’
‘You tell me how. We flatter our men with our pain. We bow before them. We make ourselves into dolls for their amusement. We lose our dignity in corsets and high shoes and gossip and the slavery of marriage! And our reward for this service? The back of the hand… The face turned to the pillow… The bloody, aching cunt as you force us onto your beds to take your fat, heaving bodies! You drag us into the alleys, my lad, and cram yourselves into our mouths for two bob. When you’re not beating us senseless! When we’re not bloody, from the eyes, and the mouth, and the ass, and the cunt! Never again… will I kneel to any man. Now they shall kneel to me. As you do, monster.’