a charwoman in Battersea, as the touchstone of all modern
theories about the mass of women. Her name is not Buttons;
she is not in the least a contemptible nor entirely a comic
figure. She has a powerful stoop and an ugly, attractive face,
a little like that of Huxley--without the whiskers, of course.
The courage with which she supports the most brutal bad luck has
something quite creepy about it. Her irony is incessant and inventive;
her practical charity very large; and she is wholly unaware
of the philosophical use to which I put her.

But when I hear the modern generalization about her sex on all sides
I simply substitute her name, and see how the thing sounds then.
When on the one side the mere sentimentalist says, "Let woman
be content to be dainty and exquisite, a protected piece of social
art and domestic ornament," then I merely repeat it to myself
in the "other form," "Let Mrs. Buttons be content to be dainty
and exquisite, a protected piece of social art, etc." It is
extraordinary what a difference the substitution seems to make.
And on the other hand, when some of the Suffragettes say in their
pamphlets and speeches, "Woman, leaping to life at the trumpet call
of Ibsen and Shaw, drops her tawdry luxuries and demands to grasp
the sceptre of empire and the firebrand of speculative thought"--
in order to understand such a sentence I say it over again in the
amended form: "Mrs. Buttons, leaping to life at the trumpet call
of Ibsen and Shaw, drops her tawdry luxuries and demands to grasp
the sceptre of empire and the firebrand of speculative thought."
Somehow it sounds quite different. And yet when you say Woman I
suppose you mean the average woman; and if most women are as capable
and critical and morally sound as Mrs. Buttons, it is as much as we
can expect, and a great deal more than we deserve.