When Katherine arrived at work, Mrs Newman was seething. For a moment Katherine wondered whether she was late. Perhaps she’d made a mistake with the typing. But then her employer thrust the Dominion into her hands.
‘Have you seen this?’ she demanded, stabbing at the page.
If Mrs Newman hadn’t been so angry, Katherine might have laughed out loud. Why waste a penny on a newspaper? Mrs Newman always told her anything of importance. Instead she read addresses given in Dunedin by Drs Ferdinand Batchelor and Truby King.
According to Dr Batchelor, from puberty, girls’ education should be ‘chiefly directed to domestic management, domestic economy, physiology and hygiene’.
‘They’re supposed to be pillars of the State, defenders of women and helpless babies, and look at what they do. He’s an obstetrician, Katherine. Batchelor’s the obstetrician. They teach at the medical school.’
Mrs Newman grabbed the paper. ‘The average male, even the below-average male, becomes “useful and successful” while the brilliant female is lucky to attain mediocrity! Well, I wonder why. With men like him and King standing in the way, refusing women a foot in the door, what does he expect?
‘Look at this. Look at what Doctor King says.’ She almost spat the word out of her mouth, as if an insect had flown in and had to be expelled.
Katherine nearly stepped back – sometimes Mrs Newman was like a single-handed military operation – but she didn’t want to seem rude.
‘He says educating girls on similar lines to boys is “one of the most preposterous farces ever perpetuated”. My sakes! They think educating girls is a defiance of nature!’ She threw the newspaper down on the desk. ‘And all the while they’ve got the churches and the House of Representatives and the medical establishment applauding. We’ve got to prepare a reply, Katherine, we need to get it in tomorrow’s paper.’
Katherine watched a pencil knocked from the desktop fall towards the square of carpet. She watched Mrs Newman pacing the room, scratching at her wrist, at her forehead above her right eye. She always scratched when she was agitated. And where she scratched, the skin flared brown-red and turned dry and scaly.
How many times had Katherine fumed herself – at Donald, his mother, even her own mother? Their attitudes were only a window onto this greater world. She stared at the angry patches on Mrs Newman’s skin. Even when the heart and mind were hidden, there were leakages – thoughts, feelings, desires seeping, erupting – within the sealed body.
‘Well, what are you waiting for, Katherine? We’ve got a letter to write.’
Katherine quickly picked up the pencil. She folded the newspaper, sat down at her desk and pulled several sheets of paper from the drawer. ‘SIR –’ Mrs Newman began, ‘I am appalled . . . yes . . . I am appalled at the addresses delivered yesterday by Drs Ferdinand Batchelor and Truby King . . .
‘Who has the arrogance to declare, what Nature intends for Man and Woman? Once humankind believed . . . What did we believe? Mmm . . . Once we believed the earth and Man were the centre of the universe. But history and our evolution did not stop in the Dark Ages. The enlightened soul looks forward to a day when Man and Woman are accorded equal opportunity and value.
‘Is a child’s intellectual capacity frozen at puberty? Why should it be the case for girls and not for boys?
‘Surely if we value our families and our children, an intelligent woman who is the equal of her husband, and who can educate her children, is something to be prized. Is Man so insecure that his only pride is to have Woman by his side with the intellect of a vegetable?
‘As our knowledge increases are we not to progress with it? An intelligent woman with an empty mind and little to do is an unhappy woman, driven to melancholy and despair. Yet a woman who is educated and stimulated by a fulfilling profession is interested and active in life, an asset to family and society . . . What do you think, Katherine? Read it out to me . . .
‘Yes, that’s good. Did you use capitals for Man and Woman? Like Nature. Yes, I think that will do. That will do well enough.’
Katherine took from the drawer thick cream paper monogrammed with the family crest and a sheet of plain white paper. She fed them into the typewriter with carbon in between, listening to the rollers turn, suddenly remembering a visit to the countryside she’d made with Mrs Newman only the week before – her first ride in a motorcar. Sitting with the wind blowing out her hair, she’d thought of Mr Wong, his lovely, ridiculous grin, and as the motorcar slowed and crossed the railway line, wheels rattling over the wooden bars of the cattlestop, she heard the sound of keys, the smooth black ovals with their white lettering, the feel of metal beneath her fingers, the rhythmic swish and clatter, the little bell, and the satisfaction of pulling the carriage across for the beginning of the next line.
As Katherine typed she did not think of pompous men in Dunedin – she was so tired of pompous men. She thought of the thrill of driving a motorcar; she thought of horses clipping the road, trams starting and stopping, trains clattering all the way to the beach at Plimmerton . . .
‘Is it done, Katherine?’ she heard Mrs Newman say. ‘I’m going to take it down to the Dominion myself. Hand it to Mr Earle personally. Oh Katherine, before I go . . . please sit down.’ She gestured to the chesterfield, sat down in the easy chair opposite.
And that was when she made Katherine promise that she wouldn’t stand in her daughter’s way. But why would she? And even if she wanted to, how could she possibly stand before Mrs Newman’s onslaught?
‘Do you realise how exceptional your daughter is?’ Mrs Newman was saying. ‘Over the years I have taken a number of girls under my wing and I can assure you, Katherine, that I have never come across a child as unusually curious or intelligent as Edie. She’ll receive a university scholarship of course – that goes without saying. But that will only pay her fees and a small allowance, not enough to live on. Never mind, I’ll provide an additional allowance. Edie will never be happy as a wife and mother, dedicated only to domestic duty . . . Well, were you happy, Katherine?’
What a question. And who could afford to think of it? Certainly not the unhappy. And those who were happy never needed to think of it.
No, Mrs Newman continued, Edie would follow in the footsteps of Emily Siedeberg or Dr Agnes Bennett. She’d prove that Batchelor and King were wrong. She’d have the chance to choose her own destiny.