Gentleness doesn’t get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs.

The line is a barbed, pragmatic aphorism contrasting “gentleness” with effectiveness. By invoking a hen—an animal whose productive labor (laying eggs) appears effortless and non-confrontational—it implies that in most human work, results require firmness, assertiveness, or even hardness rather than softness. Read as a comment on ambition and authority, it suggests that politeness alone rarely compels outcomes in competitive environments. If genuinely Chanel’s, it would align with her cultivated persona of unsentimental discipline and her skepticism toward sentimental ideals of femininity; the joke undercuts the expectation that women should rely on gentleness to succeed.