I had sold out. I hadn’t played square with my myth of The Young Woman as Artist. This myth had specified a certain order of events, a certain progression in the development of Self, and by accepting a real job I had betrayed that order. I had snatched my security before I’d made a real try for my dream. It was no good soothing myself with chronological particulars of Georgia O’Keeffe (one of my models). True, she’d had her first one-woman show at age twenty-nine—which gave me six more years. But she had found her style and had become an established painter by the mere age of thirty-eight.
The narrator indicates that accepting a real job has
A) caused her to betray her mentor
B) squelched her desire to paint
C) helped her find her artistic style
D) allowed her to fulfill a long-held dream
E) provided her with financial stability