asonably aspire to, and, in the case of very
many women, the only one that actually offers a livelihood. What is
esteemed and valuable, in our materialistic and unintelligent society,
is precisely that petty practical efficiency at which men are expert,
and which serves them in place of free intelligence. A woman, save she
show a masculine strain that verges upon the pathological, cannot hope
to challenge men in general in this department, but it is always open to
her to exchange her sexual charm for a lion's share in the earnings of
one man, and this is what she almost invariably tries to do. That is
to say, she tries to get a husband, for getting a husband means, in
a sense, enslaving an expert, and so covering up her own lack of
expertness, and escaping its consequences. Thereafter she has at least
one stout line of defence against a struggle for existence in which the
prospect of survival is chiefly based, not upon the talents that are
typically hers, but upon those that she typically lacks. Before the
average woman succumbs in this struggle, some man or other must succumb
first. Thus her craft converts her handicap into an advantage.

In this security lies the most important of all the benefits that a
woman attains by marriage. It is, in fact, the most important benefit
that the mind can imagine, for the whole effort of the human race, under
our industrial society, is concentrated upon the attainment of it. But
there are other benefits, too. One of them is that increase in dignity
which goes with an obvious success; the woman who has got herself a
satisfactory husband, or even a highly imperfect husband, is regarded
with respect by other women, and has a contemptuous patronage for those
who have failed to do likewise. Again, marriage offers her the only safe
opportunity, considering the levantine view of women as property which
Christianity has preserved in our civilization, to obtain gratification
for that powerful complex of instincts which we call the sexual, and, in
particular, for the instinct of maternity. The woman who has not had
a child remains incomplete, ill at ease, and more than a little
ridiculous. She is in the position of a man who has never stood
in battle; she has missed the most colossal experience of her sex.
Moreover, a social odium goes with her loss. Other women regard her as
a sort of permanent tyro, and treat her with ill-concealed disdain,
and deride the very virtue which lies at the bott