As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong Page B

Jesus-love.

Domíníon
    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.
    â€˜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’.
    â€˜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?
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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 . . .
    â€˜ 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.
    â€˜Is a child’s intellectual capacity frozen at puberty? Why should it be the case for girls and not for boys?
    â€˜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?
    â€˜As our knowledge increases are we not to progress with it? An