" For she acted exactly as she pleased, laughed at his strictures against her behaviour, her friends, his lectures on 'respectability'. She was the first woman in his existence who had a life of her own, who did things simply because they pleased her, who argued, who asserted herself. There was only one role he was equipped to play which was to resist, to the bitter end, this encroachment as he saw it on his authority, his manhood. And bitter it became. "

― Olive Senior , Arrival of the Snake-Woman and Other Stories