DOCTORS OF PHILOSOPHY
71
desire a form of reality where your standards can
be
high without
discomfort.
CATHERINE: I might return to scholarship one day.
LEONORA: After all these years? A scholar needs continuity, Catherine.
CATHERINE: I haven't been entirely idle for all these years. I could
pick up the threads
if
I should wish.
LEONORA: You need more than the wish, you need the capacity.
CATHERINE: What makes you think I haven't got the capacity?
LEONORA : Your manner and expression.
CATHERINE:
If
I
sat down to study a subject, Leonora,
I
would have
a studious look. Naturally I don't look the scholar when I'm run–
ning the house and running Charlie and correcting the fourth-form
homework.
LEONORA: A woman of intellectual capacity has a certain manner and
expression all the time. They are the manner and expression of
detachment, and you can't pick them up overnight.
CATHERINE: I wouldn't want to pick them up at all. I like to please
men. Do you think it pleases a man when he looks into a woman's
eyes and sees a reflection of the British Museum Reading Room?
I don't envy your expression and your manner.
LEONORA: I think you do. Sometimes you look at me like a jealous
woman.
CATHERINE: That's a curious observation, considering you are so
detached. In fact, I only want to know what makes you tick when
I look at you.
LEONORA: What conclusion have you reached?
CATHERINE: That you're in love with something without needing it
to love you back. That's how you look and act. Sometimes it's
terrifying.
LEONORA: And sometimes fascinating.
CATHERINE : Yes . . . of course I'm attached to you. Don't you get
tired of practising detachment?
LEONORA: I admit sometimes I get tired of being treated as a scholar
and a gentleman.
CATHERINE: You ought to have got married, Leonora,
if
only for the
pleasure of pleasing a man. Hundreds of women academics are
married these days. They teach in the universities, run their homes,
