37.


Women as Martyrs


I have given three reasons for the prosperity of the notion that man
is a natural polygamist, bent eternally upon fresh dives into Lake of
Brimstone No. 7. To these another should be added: the thirst for
martyrdom which shows itself in so many women, particularly
under the higher forms of civilization. This unhealthy appetite, in
fact, may be described as one of civilization's diseases; it is almost
unheard of in more primitive societies. The savage woman,
unprotected by her rude culture and forced to heavy and incessant
labour, has retained her physical strength and with it her honesty
and self-respect. The civilized woman, gradually degenerated by a
greater ease, and helped down that hill by the pretensions of
civilized man, has turned her infirmity into a virtue, and so affects a
feebleness that is actually far beyond the reality. It is by this route
that she can most effectively disarm masculine distrust, and get what
she wants. Man is flattered by any acknowledgment, however
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