“It is one nevertheless! There are thousands of them that roost among the hills in that quarter. I know the place thoroughly. The heights are the greatest that we have in the surrounding country. The distance from this spot is about five miles. He, no doubt, has some fish, or bird now within his talons, with which to feed his young. He will feed them, and they will grow strong, and will finally use their own wings. Shall he continue to feed them after that? Must they never seek their own food?”
“If these solitudes have nursed me, must they continue to nurse me always? Must I never use the wings to which they have given vigor? Must I never employ the sight to which they have imparted vigilance? Must I never go forth, and strive and soar, and make air, and earth, and sea, tributary to my wing and eye? Alas! I am a woman!--and her name is weakness! You tell me of what I am, and of what I may become. But what am I? I mock myself too often with this question to believe all your fine speeches. And what may I become? Alas! who can tell me that? I know my strength, but I also know my weakness. I feel the burning thoughts of my brain; I feel the yearning impulses in my heart; but they bring nothing--they promise nothing--I feel the pang of constant denial. I feel that I can be nothing!”
“Say not so, Margaret--think not so, I beseech you. With your genius, your enthusiasm--your powers of expression--there is nothing, becoming in your sex, and worthy of it, which you may not be.”
“You can not deceive me! It might be so, if this were Italy; there, where the very peasant burns with passion, and breathes his feeblest and meanest thoughts and desires in song. But here, they already call me mad! They look on me as one doomed to Bedlam. They avoid me with sentiments and looks of distrust, if not of fear; and when I am looking into the cloud, striving to pierce, with dilating eye its wild yellow flashing centres, they draw their flaxen-headed infants to their breasts, and mutter their thanks to God, that he has not, in a fit of wrath, made them to resemble me! If, forgetful of earth, and trees, and the human stocks around me, I pour forth the language of the great song-masters, they grin at my insanity--they hold me incapable of reason, and declare their ideas of what that is, by asking who knows most of the dairy, the cabbage-patch, the spinning-wheel, the darning-needle--who can best wash Polly's or Patty's face and comb its head--can chop up sausage-meat the finest--make the lightest paste, and more economically dispense the sugar in serving up the tea! and these are what is expected of woman! These duties of the meanest slave! From her mind nothing is expected. Her enthusiasm terrifies, her energy offends, and if her taste is ever challenged, it is to the figures upon a quilt or in a flower-garden, where the passion seems to be to make flowers grow in stars, and hearts, and crescents. What has woman to expect where such are the laws; where such are the expectations from her? What am I to hope? I, who seem to be set apart--to feel nothing like the rest--to live in a different world--to dream of foreign things--to burn with a hope which to them is frenzy, and speak a language which they neither understand nor like! What can I be, in such a world? Nothing, nothing! I do not deceive myself. I can never hope to be anything.”
