When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity, she finally began to enjoy being a woman.

She indulged herself from time to time. It helped remind her she was truly free.

She had a lively, playful disposition that delighted in anything ridiculous.

She is a woman now, and not an idle girl, not a domestic ornament or a sexual convenience anymore.

For better or for worse, she found herself putting aside fear in favor of curiosity.

It was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil.

But now that her moral sorrows were passing away a fresh one arose

The simple fact was that she no longer hated them as a matter of principle. It was also a source of shameful amazement that she could ever have wasted so much energy on groundless prejudice, when acceptance and tolerance would have been the easier, even the lazier, course.

She told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous.

So far from a trudge, she seemed to find the task tolerably amusing.
“Oh, languages aren’t work,” she explained cheerily. “They’re a game. Now, economics, that’s boring.”

And yet I know that in her death, she has found the freedom she could not find in life. She is no longer confined to a room, a bed, and a body that no longer works.

After a good, successful torture, she was as happy as I ever saw her. I guess everyone needed a hobby.

Living in bondage, I have set myself free: I have broken away from the clutch
of all narrowness.

At this good news, so great
The Devil's pleasure grew,
That, with a joyful swish, he rent
The hole where his tail came through.