I think I am in the classic position of a woman artist who in order to maintain a marriage is obliged to trim herself so as not to make her husband feel—what? Something a man is not supposed to have to feel? This must be one of the reasons V is so against it when I have to do publicity. It’s also perhaps why he is encouraging to me about doing journalism. He is as generous as he can possibly be about my book and its success, but if I had success like that with a novel there’d be serious trouble—I don’t know what trouble exactly, but life would get tougher. Why are men so fragile? If he were getting more attention than I was, everyone would be at ease, it would be seen as normal and appropriate. Tilt it, and everything gets unhappy and shadowy. Maybe it’s true then. A woman artist who wants to develop as far as she can needs to live alone. He is a better novelist than I am—he can handle broader ideas, more characters etc—this is not the problem. The problem is that my success seems to get in his way. It somehow stops him from working.

What to do? I could accept without further complaint his demand for uninterrupted occupation of the flat. Work harder at cooking. Do less publicity. Pull my horns in. How dismal.