Eleanor Marx-Aveling

Il­lus­tri­ous

A man, at least, is free; he may travel over pas­sions and over coun­tries, over­come obstacles, taste of the most faraway pleas­ures. But a wo­man is al­ways hampered. At once in­ert and flex­ible, she has against her the weak­ness of the flesh and legal de­pend­ence. Her will, like the veil of her bon­net, held by a string, flut­ters in every wind; there is al­ways some de­sire that draws her, some con­ven­tion­al­ity that re­strains.

For his philo­soph­ical con­vic­tions did not in­ter­fere with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of sen­ti­ment; he could make dis­tinc­tions, make al­low­ances for ima­gin­a­tion and fan­at­icism. In this tragedy, for ex­ample, he found fault with the ideas, but ad­mired the style; he de­tested the con­cep­tion, but ap­plauded all the de­tails, and loathed the char­ac­ters while he grew en­thu­si­astic over their dia­logue.