Don’t you know what you’re doing?

From Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Page 485.  The grand final speech of the perpetrator of the outrages committed at Shrewsbury College.  An argument that takes the various debates within the feminist movement and recasts it most explicitly into a class argument.  The privileged educated women are taking the jobs of and using men for their own ends to the detriment of lower class men and women.  An argument not often heard so explicitly made, but there in the data.  

“Clear myself! I wouldn’t trouble to clear myself. You smug hypocrites-I’d like to see you bring me into court. I’d laugh in your faces. How would you look, sitting there while I told the judge how that woman there killed my husband?”

“I am exceedingly disturbed,” said Miss de Vine, “to hear about all this. I knew nothing of it till just now. But indeed I had no choice in the matter. I could not foresee the consequences-and even if I had-”

“You wouldn’t have cared. You killed him and you didn’t care. I say you murdered him. What had he done to you? What harm had he done to anybody? He only wanted to live and be happy. You took the bread out of his mouth and flung his children and me out to starve. What did it matter to you? You had no children. You hadn’t a man to care about. I know all about you. You had a man once and you threw him over because it was too much bother to look after him. But couldn’t you leave my man alone? He told a lie about somebody else who was dead and dust “hundreds of years ago. Nobody was the worse for that. Was a dirty bit of paper more important than all our lives and happiness? You broke him and killed him-all for nothing. Do you think that’s a woman’s job?”

“Most unhappily,” said Miss de Vine, “it was my job.”

“What business had you with a job like that? A woman’s job is to look after a husband and children. I wish I had killed you. I wish I could kill you all. I wish I could burn down this place and all the places like it-where you teach women to take men’s jobs and rob them first and kill them afterwards.”

She turned to the Warden.

“Don’t you know what you’re doing? I’ve heard you sit round snivelling about unemployment-but it’s you“, it’s women like you who take the work away from the men and break their hearts and lives. No wonder you can’t get men for yourselves and hate the women who can. God keep the men out of your hands, that’s what I say. You’d destroy your own husbands, if you had any, for an old book or bit of writing… I loved my husband and you broke his heart. If he’d been a thief or a murderer, I’d have loved him and stuck to him. He didn’t mean to steal that old bit of paper-he only put it away. It made no difference to anybody. It wouldn’t have helped a single man or woman or child in the world-it wouldn’t have kept a cat alive; but you killed him for it.”

“Peter had got up and stood behind Miss de Vine, with his hand over her wrist. She shook her head. Immovable, implacable, thought Harriet; this won’t make her pulse miss a single beat. The rest of the Common Room looked merely stunned.

“Oh, no!” said Annie, echoing Harriet’s thoughts. “She feels nothing. None of them feel anything. You brazen devils-you all stand together. You’re only frightened for your skins and your miserable reputations. I scared you all, didn’t I? God! how I laughed to see you all look at one another! You didn’t even trust each other. You can’t agree about anything except hating decent women and their men. I wish I’d torn the throats out of the lot of you. It would have been too good for you, though. I wanted to see you thrown out to starve, like us. I wanted to see you all dragged into the gutter. I wanted to see you-you-sneered at and trampled on and degraded and despised as we were. It would do you good to learn to scrub floors for a living as I’ve done, and use your hands for something, and say ‘madam’ to a lot of scum… But I made you shake in your shoes, anyhow. You couldn’t even find out who was doing it-that’s all your wonderful brains come to. There’s nothing in your books about life and marriage and children, is there? Nothing about desperate people-or love-or hate or anything human. You’re ignorant and stupid and helpless. You’re a lot of fools. You can’t do anything for yourselves. Even you, you silly old hags-you had to get a man to do your work for you.

“You brought him here.” She leaned over Harriet with her fierce eyes, as though she would have fallen on her and torn her to pieces. “And you’re the dirtiest hypocrite of the lot. I know who you are. You had a lover once, and he died. You chucked him out because you were too proud to marry him. You were his mistress and you sucked him dry, and you didn’t value him enough to let him make an honest woman of you. He died because you weren’t there to look after him. I suppose you’d say you loved him. You don’t know what love means. It means sticking to your man through thick and thin and putting up with everything. But you take men and use them and throw them away when you’ve finished with them. They come after you like wasps round a jam-jar, and then they fall in and die. What are you going to do with that one there? You send for him when you need him to do your dirty work, and when you’ve finished with him you’ll get rid of him. You don’t want to cook his meals and mend his clothes and bear his children like a decent woman. You’ll use him, like any other tool, to break me. You’d like to see me in prison and my children in a home, because you haven’t the guts to do your proper job in the world. The whole bunch of you together haven’t flesh and blood enough to make you fit for a man. As for you-”

Peter had come back to his place and was sitting with his head in his hands. She went over and shook him furiously by the shoulder, and as he looked up, spat in his face. “You! you dirty traitor! You rotten little white-faced rat! It’s men like you that make women like this. You don’t know how to do anything but talk. What do you know about life, with your title and your money and your clothes and motor-cars? You’ve never done a hand’s turn of honest work. You can buy all the women you want. Wives and mothers may rot and die for all you care, while you chatter about duty and honour. Nobody would sacrifice anything for you-why should they? That woman’s making a fool of you and you can’t see it. If she marries you for your money she’ll make a worse fool of you, and you’ll deserve it. You’re fit for nothing but to keep your hands white and father other men’s children… What are you going to do now, all of you? Run away and squeal to the magistrate because I made fools of you all? You daren’t. You’re afraid to come out into the light. You’re afraid for your precious college and your precious selves. I’m not afraid. I did nothing but stand up for my own flesh and blood. Damn you! I can laugh at you all! You daren’t touch me. You’re afraid of me. I had a husband and I loved him-and you were jealous of me and you killed him. Oh, God! You killed him among you, and we never had a happy moment again.”