她已经习惯了人们对她的回应。他们中的许多人认为婚姻和工作之间存在极地选择，并且她越热爱自己的工作，她越激烈地拒绝了孩子或男性伙伴关系的想法。伊丽莎白放弃了试图解释。她找到了一份工作，因为她需要生活。她发现一个有趣的人，而不是一个沉闷的人。她试图做得很好，而不是做得很好。她看不到这三个逻辑步骤中的任何一个暗示着对男人或儿童的暴力拒绝。
(She had grown accustomed to people's responses to her. Many of them assumed that there was a polar choice between marriage and work and that the more enthusiastically she had embraced her job, the more vigourously she must have rejected the idea of children or male partnership. Elizabeth had given up trying to explain. She had taken a job because she needed to live; she had found an interesting one in preference to a dull one; she had tried to do well rather than badly. She could not see how any of these three logical steps implied a violent rejection of men or children.)