"I have noticed that what young women are doing is looking for a husband, just as if there hadn't been any so-called feminist revolution," Lessing says. "Just open the newspaper and see, what has changed? Women are free to behave as men do, and they do, but they were doing that in the '20s.
"In the '20s after World War I, there were the bright young things, they didn't burn their bras, I don't know if they had proper bras, but they were just as good as men at stuff. They danced the tango, they lost their knickers, there was this great act of rebellion and humanism, and I don't think our liberated young women have gotten very much more advanced than that. They're very sensible in all kinds of ways. But a lot of them just want a man. I also know a lot of women who don't want children, which I think is marvelous."
In taking on the evils of World War I in her new book, Lessing is not shy about extending her condemnation to the wars of a new century. She called President Bush a "worldwide calamity," claims the U.S.' trauma from the Sept. 11 attacks has been overblown and insists U.S. military power has been less than fortuitous for the rest of the world.
"Well, it's not very pleasant, is it? I mean, I don't like it, who likes it?" she says. "I think what is likely to happen is that America might fall apart. . . . The whole of California would be perfectly happy by itself, I think, and the East Coast is such a different land. . . . So if there is some kind of cataclysmic thing, like a very bad economic problem, I can see it happening. And it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. I think probably Americans will think it's bad. But I don't think the outside world will think it a bad thing." LA TIMES Oct.23, 2007
No comments:
Post a Comment