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