At least one can know it and not have illusions.

A woman perhaps can get on; a woman, it seems to me, has no natural place anywhere; wherever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface and, more or less, to crawl.

You protest, my dear?
you're horrified?
you declare you'll never crawl?
It's very true that I don't see you crawling; you stand more upright than a good many poor creatures.
Very good; on the whole, I don't think you'll crawl.

But the men, the Americans; je vous demande un peu, what do they make of it over here?
I don't envy them trying to arrange themselves.

Look at poor Ralph Touchett: what sort of a figure do you call that?
Fortunately he has a consumption; I say fortunately, because it gives him something to do.
His consumption's his carriere it's a kind of position.