In Her Day by Rita Mae Brown

say something but Ilse quickly added, “But I know why they do it. It’s woman-hatred, you know? I mean they hate themselves so much they couldn’t possibly respect another woman. Equality for those people means every other woman has to be as miserable as she is. Scares me, really fucking scares me. Here I am working my ass off and I’m not running the group or giving orders and this woman calls me an elitist. And even if everyone else by now knows she’s vicious there are lots of others like her in the world.”
    “How people misuse your work isn’t your responsibility, Ilse. No matter what you do someone can always twist it and use it against you. The hell with them. Keep doing what you can do.”
    “Yeah, but it hurts.”
    “Where did you ever get the idea things were going to be easy? Maybe what hurts is that people don’t like you. Like I said, the hell with them. You can’t live for other people. Look at what messes they make of their lives. You’d allow opinion to sway you? Never.”
    “But the whole point of the movement is to make women responsible to each other, to put each other first instead of giving our energies to men. I can’t disregard other women like that.”
    “Until you put yourself first you’re a liar. You’ll try to get your way under the table without being aware of it and that will really destroy your women’s movement. If all you people would sit down and figure out what you need in your lives, you’d probablyfind you have a real basis for bonding. Idealism isn’t going to get you anywhere. You hear me?”
    “Carole, you sounded so Southern then. Where’d that accent come from?”
    “Did I? A remnant of my childhood, I guess. Sometimes when something’s close to the bone I fall into it.”
    “But why did you change the way you talk?”
    “You try living in the North with a Southern accent and see how far you get. People make incredible assumptions about you.”
    “You just contradicted yourself. You know that? You got finished telling me not to be influenced by other people’s opinions and here you changed something yourself.”
    “Goddammit, don’t nit-pick. I was eighteen years old when I migrated up here to go to Vassar. I didn’t know as much then and I was influenced. I wouldn’t do it today but I’d like you to know for your information, that Yankees, once they hear a drawl, no longer take seriously anything the person says. Hell’s fire.”
    “You know, that’s one of the few things you’ve ever told me about yourself, about your past. Tell me other things.”
    “I was born November 28, 1932, just outside of Winchester, Virginia.”
    “I thought you were raised in Richmond.”
    “I was but the family had gone up to my grandmother’s farm for Thanksgiving and Mother wanted to be with her mother when she had me. I spent all my summers there until I went to college, then I worked in the summers and hated every minute of it.”
    “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
    “I have a brother, living, and a sister who died in 1958.”
    “More. I want to know when you came out. We’re just getting to the good parts.”
    “Muffy Cadwalder. God, I haven’t thought of her in years. Muffy and I were in the same class at Vassar. We both lived in Jewett.”
    “I was in Cushing,” Ilse interrupted.
    “There isn’t much to tell about my flaming romance with Muffy … except that I fell in love with her in the hospital.”
    “Were you sick?” Ilse had her legs crossed and was all interest.
    “No. Muff had a slip up. She was quite pregnant. In those days that was a fate worse than death, my dear, to be unmarried and pregnant. She came from a wealthy Chicago family and they had connections, obviously. She was also lucky enough to have an understanding mother who arranged the whole thing. Muff was terrified and asked me to go home with her for the weekend. She paid my way. Her mother and I stood out in the hallway and after the anesthetic they wheeled her down