wever insincere, of his superior
strength and capacity. He likes to be leaned upon, appealed to, followed
docilely. And this tribute to his might caresses him on the psychic
plane as well as on the plane of the obviously physical. He not only
enjoys helping a woman over a gutter; he also enjoys helping her dry her
tears. The result is the vast pretence that characterizes the relations
of the sexes under civilization--the double pretence of man's cunning
and autonomy and of woman's dependence and deference. Man is always
looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder
to put her head on.

This feminine affectation, of course, has gradually taken on the force
of a fixed habit, and so it has got a certain support, by a familiar
process of self-delusion, in reality. The civilized woman inherits that
habit as she inherits her cunning. She is born half convinced that she
is really as weak and helpless as she later pretends to be, and the
prevailing folklore offers her endless corroboration. One of the
resultant phenomena is the delight in martyrdom that one so often finds
in women, and particularly in the least alert and introspective of them.
They take a heavy, unhealthy pleasure in suffering; it subtly pleases
them to be bard put upon; they like to picture themselves as slaughtered
saints. Thus they always find something to complain of; the very
conditions of domestic life give them a superabundance of clinical
material. And if, by any chance, such material shows a falling off, they
are uneasy and unhappy. Let a woman have a husband whose conduct is not
reasonably open to question, and she will invent mythical offences to
make him bearable. And if her invention fails she will be plunged into
the utmost misery and humiliation. This fact probably explains many
mysterious divorces: the husband was not too bad, but too good. For
public opinion among women, remember, does not favour the woman who is
full of a placid contentment and has no masculine torts to report; if
she says that her husband is wholly satisfactory she is looked upon as a
numskull even more dense that he is himself. A man, speaking of his
wife to other men, always praises her extravagantly. Boasting about her
soothes his vanity; he likes to stir up the envy of his fellows. But
when two women talk of their husbands it is mainly atrocities that they
describe. The most esteemed woman gossip is the one with the longest and
most various rep