Fraternity

John Galsworthy won a Nobel Prize in literature in 1932. He is best known for writing the Forsyte saga. Galsworthy campaigned for various social causes in his writing, including prison reform, censorship issues, women's rights, and the rights of animals. Fraternity was published in 1909. The story begins with a woman of 38 standing in front of a mirror in a dressing room. "Before a long mirror, in whose bright pool there yearly bathed hundreds of women's bodies, divested of skirts and bodices, whose unruffled surface reflected daily a dozen women's souls divested of everything, her eyes became as bright as steel; but having ascertained the need of taking two inches off the chest of the gentian frock, one off its waist, three off its hips, and of adding one to its skirt, they clouded again with doubt, as though prepared to fly from the decision she had come to. Resuming her bodice, she asked: "