‘Only that women do not give their deepest love to their husbands. Oh, we can love them, and serve them and adore them. We even obey them if we cannot get away from it. But I believe it is the children we will bear who will bind us most deeply. The love of a child is the love that will truly enslave us, for we might leave a husband, but never a child.’
‘I do not believe the love of a husband must be lessened by the having of children,’ Magda protested.
‘I did not say the love was lessened, only that the love of a child will inevitably eclipse the love a woman has for its father. I am sure that is why men stray so, because the pretty princess they fell in love with has inconsiderately become a wife and a mother,’ Bernice continued. There was a glimmer of amusement in her eye that made me wonder how serious she was.
‘You think a man cannot love the mother of his child?’ Magda snapped.
‘Some rare man might even love the mother of his children more than when she was a princess, but in general, a man has not the capacity to sacrifice himself for love. Not the love of a woman, anyway. He is all too ready to sacrifice himself and his family for an ideal or for his country.’ There was a touch of bitterness here, but none of us remarked upon it, since the voracious political ambitions of Bernice’s father, as well as his neglect of her mother for an actress he kept in an apartment on the other side of town, were all too well known.
‘Men do not love as women do,’ Friday conceded, after a moment. ‘But I think there is a reason for it. Men were once the hunters and the protectors of their families, and they could do neither if they were dead. So they must be selfish and keep themselves alive, for the sake of their families. And also in order to hunt, they must be single-minded and ruthless. Those aspects of their character remain even in this day, preventing them from abdicating their souls when they wed, as women do.’
‘Oh, what a vile discourse,’ Magda cried, looking really repelled. ‘Don’t you think so, Willow? What of falling in love?’
‘I do not think one falls in love in the same way one trips over the edge of a Persian rug,’ I answered her composedly. Yet even as I spoke, I could not help but think of Mama, telling me she had fallen in love with Papa before he had even seen her. And Papa had said he had fallen in love the first time he had set eyes on Mama. Even Ernst spoke of falling in love with Mama at the ball, though she had not told me when she first loved him. Perhaps my poor stepfather grieved Mama’s loss so because he had not felt he ever had a proper grip on her. Perhaps he blamed himself for not winning from her an undying love. Poor broken Ernst. ‘At least,’ I amended, ‘I do not wish that sort of love for myself.’
‘Then what sort do you want? It seems to me we have agreed that there is only romantic love in stories, full of princesses and princes, or the love that comes after, where a woman loves her children and her man is neglected and sulky and goes looking for another princess,’ Friday said with interest.
‘Perhaps that is it,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I want some other kind of love than those kinds. I don’t want a prince or a ruthless hunter. I don’t want someone to fall in love with me at first sight. I want a man who will look more than once before he loves, and when he loves, can love all that I may be as well as all that I am. That probably sounds terribly dull to you,’ I added, fearing that I sounded pompous and self-righteous. They all regarded me in silence, and then Friday spoke. ‘What I think is this,’ she said in her decided way. ‘A woman does not fall in love as a man does. A woman must entice a proposal as a flower sends the scent of its honey to draw the bee to it. Therefore she must judge a man and seek out one who suits her purposes. Consciously or unconsciously, she chooses a father for her children.’