I dance with people I despise; amuse myself with men whose only talent lies in their feet, gain the disapprobation of people I honor and respect; return home at day break with my brain in a state which was never intended for it; and arise in the middle of the next day feeling infinitely more, in spirit and flesh like a Liliputian, than a woman with body and soul.

Entry (when she was eighteen) in her Commonplace Book, 1868-1869. A Kate Chopin miscellany (ed. Northwestern State Univ, 1979)