...of incomprehension

The times were strongly in favour of freedom for the female sex; not so Herr von Maerker, who had meanwhile become permanent head of a ministerial department and was therefore well aware of the lack of masculine freedom. His daughter's opinions made him feel half embittered and half ashamed at belonging to the previous generation, for men feel shame at becoming old as if it were a secret vice. He retreated silently before his daughter's vigorous offensive. He suffered and even gradually became wise. He belonged to that breed of average men who acquire understanding only in later years because they have had to keep silent for so long, and for whom nothing remains but to become meditative. When Hilde, on behalf of all the daughters of the world exclaimed: 'Our mother's were exploited and betrayed!' Herr von Maerker felt it as a calumny on his dead wife and an insult by his daughter. He wondered where Hilde had acquired so much robust callousness and shocking rhetoric. He still knew nothing of his daughter.

[The Silent Prophet, Roth, J.]