into marriage--that they have to be persuaded to it by eloquence and
pertinacity, and even by a sort of intimidation. The truth is that, in a
world almost divested of intelligible idealism, and hence dominated
by a senseless worship of the practical, marriage offers the best
career that the average woman can reasonably 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