We are taught, relentlessly, to measure a woman’s fortune by her comfort — by the house, the car, the absence of visible want — and to conclude that a woman who has those things is a lucky woman, and an ungrateful one if she complains.

Brandon’s attorney was not being stupid when he leaned on my comforts; he was appealing to that exact reflex, the deep assumption that provision is the same thing as freedom, that a woman kept in luxury is a woman well-treated.

And it is a lie, and a dangerous one, because it renders a whole category of captivity invisible and even enviable.

The measure of a person’s freedom was never the quality of the things surrounding them.

A gilded cage and a plain one differ only in decoration; the bird in each cannot leave.

What determines whether you are free is not what you are given but what you are permitted to keep against the wishes of the person giving it — whether the door is yours to open, or only theirs to lock.