All this fun and games, all-girls-together stuff ended abruptly after I married in 1935. Odd that I should have had to retire into the semi-contemplative life of the suburbs in order to arrive at an understanding of the first principles of life in a society. As was then customary for married women, I retreated to the far suburbs to spend my days keeping the house clean to a ridiculous standard; the gulf between domestic and professional life was pretty well total. I have been a kept woman ever since then. As the house was spit new, the cleaning of it amounted to very little: even allowing for polishing acres of wood block floors, every week of the year, the day's work petered out by ten o'clock. Fearsome hours stretched ahead which had to be filled with gardening and jamming and bottling. It is hard to believe how much time went on my husband's socks, knitting them, washing them, darning them. The boredom of it, the excruciating self-destroying boredom of it all. Caring for two adults (my son was not born till three years later) with one of them out of the house from half past eight in the morning till half past nine at night earning the mortgage, just could not absorb all the mental energies of an active young woman.