Women's handiwork' was invented to mask this horrible idleness; hands embroider, knit, they are busy hands, and they move; it is not a question here of real work, because the object produced is not the goal; it has little importance, and it is often a problem to know what to do with it: one gets rid of it by giving it to a friend or a charitable organization or by cluttering mantelpieces or coffee tables; neither is it a game that reveals the pure joy of existence in its gratuitousness; and it is hardly a diversion because the mind is vacant: it is an absurd distraction, as Pascal described it; with needle or hook, woman sadly weaves the very nothingness of her days.