Start: The life in such a house can neve...

Start: The life in such a house can never make a woman of my stamp happy. When I was fifteen, that might have happened to me. I was desperate then—thought I should never be happy. I bought a revolver, and ran one night bare-foot thru the deep snow over the bridge to the park to shoot myself there. But then by good luck I lay three months in the hospital without setting eyes on a man, and in that time my eyes opened and I got to know myself. Night after night in my dreams I saw the man for whom I was created and who was created for me, and then when I was let out on the men again I was no longer a silly goose. Since then I can see on a man, in a pitch-dark night and a hundred feet away, whether we're suited to each other; and if I sin against that insight I feel the next day dirtied, body and soul, and need weeks to get over the loathing I have for myself. And now you imagine I'll give myself to every and any Tom and Harry!

Wedekind, Frank, Pandora’s Box, Project Gutenberg, 2010, p. 35. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33415/33415-h/33415-h.htm

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