Gallichan had the grace to concede guilt on the part of the British patriarchy ‘. . . who have kept their womenfolk under lock and key . . .’ and therefore had only themselves to blame, but he was also himself deeply patronising, raining blame on the rampancy, defiance and fanaticism of modern woman: Ideas are seething in her busy little brain. She is desperately intellectual. One day she tells you that she is prepared to die for the cause of Women’s Suffrage. Next week she will be immersed in economics, or vegetarianism, or free love . . . * The eponymous heroine of H. G. Wells’s shocking novel Ann Veronica () readily gave her name to independent-minded women like her who ran away from home, experimented with emancipation and broke the moral taboos of the day. ‘A world that doesn’t want me . . .’ ‘I don’t mean to marry,’ she says, with a ring of disdain. ‘I want to live my own life.’ . . . She tries to disguise her sex attractions by dressing dowdily, neglecting her hair, wearing square-toed boots, and assuming inelegant poses.
