the tenacity with which the female adheres to normality,
but also to the deviation caused in her criminality by prostitution. The
history of this social phenomenon, and an examination of the anatomy and
functions of the types representing this variation of criminality show
that the prostitute generally exhibits a greater number of degenerate
and criminal characters than the ordinary female offender.

Prostitution is therefore the feminine equivalent of criminality in the
male, because it satisfies the desire for licence, idleness, and
indecency, characteristic of the criminal nature.

In addition to prostitutes and ordinary offenders, who constitute the
larger part of female criminality, there exists a small number of born
criminals of the female sex, who are more ferocious and terrible even
than the male criminal of the same type. The criminality of this class
of women develops on the same foundation of epilepsy and moral insanity.
The physical characters are those peculiar to the male born
criminal--projecting ears, strabismus, anomalies of dentition, and
abnormal conformation of the skull, brain, etc.; in addition, an absence
of feminine traits. In voice, structure of the pelvis, distribution of
hair, etc., she tends to resemble the opposite sex and to lose all the
instincts peculiar to her own.

From this brief description it may be gathered that this work on the
female offender owes much of its interest to the light it throws on the
normal woman. It is true that it casts doubt on many of the postulates
of feminism; but, on the other hand, it lays stress on and exalts the
many invaluable qualities characteristic of the female sex.

The preface to the work concludes with the following remarks:

"Not one of the conclusions drawn from the history and examination of
woman can justify the tyranny of which she has been and is still a
victim, from the laws of savage peoples, which forbade her to eat meat
and the flesh of the cocoanut, to those modern restrictions, which shut
her out from the advantages of higher education and prevent her from
exercising certain professions for which she is qualified. These
ridiculous, cruel, and tyrannical prohibitions have certainly been
largely instrumental in maintaining or, worse still, increasing her
present state of inferiority and permitting her exploitation by the
other sex. The very praises, not always sincere, alas, heaped on the
docile victim, are often intended more as a pr