Letters of Olive Shreiner

To W. T. STEAD


THE HOMESTEAD, KIMBERLEY,
25th March., 1895

MY married life satisfies even the high ideal of what marriage might be which has haunted me ever since I was a little child.

You refer to that woman as the man's "mistress." But there is nothing to imply that the man supported her, and no woman can rightly be called a mistress and still less a prostitute, unless she sells her body in return for gain. To me the punty of a sex relation between a man and a woman lies finally in the fact that it is not a matter of material considerations. That is nearly the only point in the woman question on which you never seem to see clearly.