g her intolerable in his eyes." "The five
worst maladies that afflict the female mind are indocility,
discontent, slander, jealousy, and silliness. Without any doubt, these
five maladies infest seven or eight out of every ten women, and it is
from these that arises the inferiority of women to men ... Neither
when she blames and accuses and curses innocent persons, nor when in
her jealousy of others she thinks to set herself up alone, does she
see that she is her own enemy, estranging others and incurring their
hatred."

The humiliating conditions to which women have been subjected in the
past and present social order, and to which full reference has been
made in previous chapters, give sufficient explanation of the jealousy
which is recognized as a marked, and, as might appear, inevitable
characteristic of Japanese women. Especially does this seem inevitable
when it is remembered how slight is their hold on their husbands, on
whose faithfulness their happiness so largely depends. Only as this
order changes and the wife secures a more certain place in the home,
free from the competition of concubines and harlots and dancing girls,
can we expect the characteristic to disappear. That it will do so
under such conditions, there is no reason to question. Already there
are evidences that in homes where the husband and the wife are both
earnest Christians, and where each is confident of the loyalty of the
other, jealousy is as rare as it is in Christian lands.

But is jealousy a characteristic limited to women? or is it not also a
characteristic of men? I am assured from many quarters that men also
suffer from it. The jealousy of a woman is aroused by the fear that
some other woman may supplant her in the eyes of her husband; that of
a man by the fear that some man may supplant him in rank or influence.
Marital jealousy of men seems to be rare. Yet I heard not long since
of a man who was so afraid lest some man might steal his wife's
affections that he could not attend to his business, and finally,
after three months of married wretchedness, he divorced her. A year
later he married her again, but the old trouble reappeared, and so he
divorced her a second time. If marital jealousy is less common among
men than among women, the explanation is at hand in the lax moral
standard for man. The feudal order of society, furthermore, was
exactly the soil in which to develop masculine jealousy. In such a
society ambition and jealousy g