Women's sexual autonomy and traditional morality

Women's sexual autonomy and traditional morality emerge not as a single argument but as a series of encounters in which women assess desire, commitment, and the right to refuse. Eveline Hutchins and Anne Elizabeth Trent meet different expectations: marriage may be proposed as a social arrangement, intimacy may be presented as a principle of freedom, and affection may be framed as service. Their responses distinguish emotional openness from consent and show that a woman’s willingness to feel or speak freely does not require her to accept another person’s terms.

Desire, courtship, and the marriage contract

During a lonely winter in Paris, Eveline spends some evenings with Raoul Lemonnier, who takes her to small cafés and restaurants. After they see Zeppelins overhead, their walk home becomes an intimate encounter: Raoul places an arm around her waist, and she realizes that his hand has moved to her breast. They speak French, and Eveline thinks she loves him intensely. The scene gives her desire a place in the story without making it a promise of marriage or a settled relationship.

At Eveline’s apartment, Raoul combs his hair at her dressing table and handles her perfume before proposing that they marry. He describes the arrangement in practical terms, referring to his uncle’s favor toward Americans and to the contract involved. Eveline giggles and says that such a contract is not what she wants. Raoul takes offense, formally says good night, and leaves; he never visits her again. The proposal therefore does not resolve their attraction. Instead, it exposes a difference between Raoul’s proposed institutional solution and Eveline’s understanding of what she wants. Her refusal is brief, but it changes the course of the relationship, and his departure leaves her alone again.

Affection as service and restraint

Anne Elizabeth Trent’s engagement to Edwin Vinal offers a contrasting model of intimacy. She tells him that she does not want to marry for a couple of years. Edwin accepts the delay and places emphasis on planning a life of service together rather than on carnal marriage. On Sunday evenings, they cook a steak in Palisades Park and talk about good and evil, love, and the city’s harsh conditions. Returning by ferry, they hold hands among the other passengers; Edwin kisses Anne Elizabeth on the forehead at parting. She experiences that kiss as a dedication. Their bond thus gives intimacy moral and communal meaning, but it also leaves the immediate terms of their future marriage open: Anne Elizabeth has named a limit, and Edwin does not insist that it be withdrawn.

The scene also places her engagement alongside a remembered attachment to Joe Washburn. When he visits the ranch, Anne Elizabeth becomes angry at her brothers’ teasing about him and is barely civil to him, although his steady kindness and understanding still unsettle her. The evidence does not show her resolving these feelings or abandoning her engagement. The contrast instead makes her romantic life more complex than a straightforward transition from one attachment to another: she has made a commitment to Edwin, yet an earlier bond remains emotionally present.

Attraction, pressure, and refusal

Anne Elizabeth’s encounter with Webb Cruthers tests the language of sexual freedom against the reality of consent. Cold and hungry after crossing by ferry, the two go to a friend’s studio on Eighth Street to warm themselves and make tea. In the private, makeshift setting, Webb admits that he is strongly attracted to her. He dismisses conventional ideas about love and argues that people should be free and happy about sex. Anne Elizabeth does not take his declaration as an invitation; she tells him that she does not understand what he means and asks for more tea and toast.

Webb becomes frustrated that she has not responded as he expects and makes an unwanted advance. Anne Elizabeth resists, pushes him away, and tells him plainly that she does not want that kind of intimacy, at least not then. She apologizes for having been mean to someone she likes, but the apology does not reverse her refusal. Webb tells her to go home and calls the episode his mistake. The encounter sharply separates a principle—freedom in sexual relationships—from any claim that attraction or a general belief in freedom entitles one person to another’s participation. Anne Elizabeth’s boundary remains decisive even as she expresses care for Webb and regret about the strain between them.

Past relationships and the meaning of freedom

In Nice, Eveline and J.W. Moorehouse discuss Eleanor Stoddard, who has mattered deeply to Eveline as a friend with shared interests, talent, and business ability. J.W. describes Eleanor as important to him during difficult years with his second wife, Gertrude, and characterizes their friendship as free from sensuality. Eveline tells him that she had assumed he and Eleanor were lovers. His denial, followed by his remark that he is now in his forties and it is too late, reveals the gap between the relationship others imagine and the one he claims to have lived. The exchange makes sexual intimacy an interpretive question: closeness does not establish that two people were lovers, and a woman’s account of what a relationship meant need not match a man’s.

The conversation then shifts to Eveline and J.W. He speaks of the war as having taught people how to live and contrasts that lesson with earlier preoccupation with money and material things. After discussing his political ambitions and his wish to reach Woodrow Wilson, J.W. says that he wishes he were free to fall in love with Eveline. She responds that they are fairly free and challenges the conventional restrictions associated with marriage, pointing out that it is wartime. The account leaves their exchange without a declared commitment or confirmed sexual relationship. Its significance lies instead in the contrast between Eveline’s readiness to question convention and J.W.’s insistence that he is not free.

A recurring distinction

Across these encounters, the book sets women’s sexual autonomy against several different forms of expectation: Raoul’s proposal of marriage, Edwin’s ideal of shared service, Webb’s appeal to freedom, and J.W.’s description of himself as constrained. These are not interchangeable positions. Marriage may be rejected as the wrong answer to desire; restraint may be accepted as part of an engagement; a language of sexual liberation may be contradicted by pressure; and an unconventional outlook may coexist with a man’s sense that he cannot act on it. Eveline and Anne Elizabeth are not presented as having one uniform response to intimacy. Their choices and refusals make the decisive point: affection, attraction, and ideals about freedom do not erase the need for each woman to define what she wants.