Sneer. And you bore all with patience, I make no doubt? Puff. Why, yes—tho’ I made ſome occaſional attempts at felo de ſe; but as I did not find thoſe raſh actions anſwer, I left off killing myſelf very ſoon.

Women are traditionally hysterical in the presence of members of the reptile kingdom. To reconcile Eve to the snake—that was the problem. In vain did the promoters of the new fad invoke plausible arguments. From one stage door to another went the emissaries of the reptile hide plungers, imploring the help of one after the other of the Paris footlight beauties. Everywhere they met with the same unreasonable snakephobia, distinguishing characteristic of femininity.

But possibly there is an antiworld in which, in addition to matter, time is also negative. […] In such an antiworld man would grow younger with time and a broken glass would come together from its fragments.

Each of these genderings of the pedagogical relation specifically and profoundly inflects the question of authority.