launched, with its gaudy fictions and preposterous alarms. And it is
thus, more importantly, that whole regiments of neurotic wives have
been convinced that their children are monuments, not to a
co-operation in which their own share was innocent and cordial, but
to the solitary libidinousness of their swinish and unconscionable
husbands.


Dr. Gamble, of course, is speaking of the lower fauna in the time of
Noah. A literal application of her theory toman today is enough to
bring it to a reductio ad absurdum. Which sex of Homo sapiens
actually does the primping and parading that she describes? Which
runs to "beautiful coloring," sartorial, hirsute, facial? Which encases
itself in vestments which "serve no other useful purpose than to aid
in securing the favours" of the other? The insecurity of the gifted
savante's` position is at once apparent. The more convincingly she
argues that the primeval mud-hens and she mackerel had to be
anesthetized with spectacular decorations in order to "endure the
caresses" of their beaux, the more she supports the thesis that men
have to be decoyed and bamboozled into love today. In other
words, her argument turns upon and destroys itself. Carried to its
last implication, it holds that women are all Donna Juanitas, and that
if they put off their millinery and cosmetics, and abandoned the
shameless sexual allurements of their scanty dress, men could not
"endure their caresses."


To be sure, Dr. Gamble by no means draws this disconcerting
conclusion herself. To the contrary, she clings to the conventional
theory that the human female of today is no more than the plaything