The narrator starts her essay with a declaration that feministic movement is not understood correctly at present. Women stand on the eve of the great changes in perception of their role and place in the world and community. And the key to this perception is an absolute demolition.
The first step in accomplishing this demolition is to understand that women do not strive to be equal with men as they are not equal - and such a supposition is a false one. A woman should first of all look for within herself to understand who she is, a man cannot be a key to such a comprehension. The only thing where women’s and men’s interest interfere is sex.
There is a common illusion that women are divided into two classes: mistresses and mothers. The narrator demands this allusion to demolish as nature has provided a woman with no restrictions, and it is a woman herself who develops her personal consciousness in all the spheres of life including sex, maternity, mentality and will.
Physical purity of a woman is considered in the society as the greatest virtue, and thus becomes an object of her subjection to a man. And in such a situation woman’s role in community is limited to her luck in maneuvering a man into marriage. Another tool used against women is a consideration that when a man moves his attention to another woman it is her personal fault and is thought as an insult, which destroys her personal wish for love. This is an illusion which endows hindrance to realization that impurity in sex is only in one’s head, mental attitude towards this issue is the biggest obstacle in women’s comprehension of their greatness.
