“At the thought of all those women working year after year and finding it hard to get two thousand pounds together, and as much as they could do to get thirty thousand pounds, we burst out in scorn at the reprehensible poverty of our sex. What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us? Powdering their noses? Looking in at shop windows? Flaunting in the sun at Monte Carlo? There were some photographs on the mantelpiece. Mary’s mother — if that was her picture — may have been a wastrel in her spare time (she had thirteen children by a minister of the church), but if so her gay and dissipated life had left too few traces of its pleasures on her face. She was a homely body; an old lady in a plaid shawl which was fastened by a large cameo; and she sat in a basket-chair, encouraging a spaniel to look at the camera, with the amused, yet strained expression of one who is sure that the dog will move directly the bulb is pressed. Now if she had gone into business; had become a manufacturer of artificial silk or a magnate on the Stock Exchange; if she had left two or three hundred thousand pounds to Fernham, we could have been sitting at our ease to-night and the subject of our talk might have been archaeology, botany, anthropology, physics, the nature of the atom, mathematics, astronomy, relativity, geography. If only Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and lectureships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex, we might have dined very tolerably up here alone off a bird and a bottle of wine; we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions. We might have been exploring or writing; mooning about the venerable places of the earth; sitting contemplative on the steps of the Parthenon, or. going at ten to an office and coming home comfortably at half-past four to write a little poetry. Only, if Mrs Seton and her like had gone into business at the age of fifteen, there would have been — that was the snag in the argument — no Mary.” (Line 1 Paragraph 14)
I think this passage contains the main idea from the reading. The narator and her friend Mary Seton discuss their college, the women’s college, which required a lot of effort to fund when it was first being built. She realizes that the men’s colleges have always been funded generously and she imagines what it would be like for her if women were to leave money for future generations like men did. She thinks of the endless possibilities she could’ve induced. However she realizes if that was the case then there would be sacrifices that women would have to make. “Only, if Mrs Seton and her like had gone into business at the age of fifteen, there would have been — that was the snag in the argument — no Mary.” The point of the passage is to convey the restrictions women go through because of their place in society. It connects to the overall text because she notes the different things she would be able to with some more funding. Throughout the text, the idea that women can only progress with a sufficient amount of money and their own space in order to expand their creativity and intellect is repeated. In the reading, the narator is constantly being interrupted from being herself. At first it was at the turf when she was exploring an idea, then at the library when she wanted to look something up. It shows an example of how women are being restricted from developing and how it takes a toll on their freedom as well.
