19.


The Actual Husband


So far as I can make out, no woman of the sort worth hearing--that
is, no woman of intelligence, humour and charm, and hence of
success in the duel of sex--has ever publicly denied this; the denial is
confined entirely to the absurd sect of female bachelors of arts and
to the generality of vain and unobservant men. The former, having
failed to attract men by the devices described, take refuge behind
the sour grapes doctrine that they have never tried, and the latter,
having fallen victims, sooth their egoism by arrogating the whole
agency to themselves, thus giving it a specious appearance of the
volitional, and even of the, audacious. The average man is an
almost incredible popinjay; he can think of himself only as at the
centre of situations. All the, sordid transactions of his life appear to
him, and are depicted in his accounts of them, as feats, successes,
proofs of his acumen. He regards it as an almost magical exploit to
operate a stock-brokerage shop, or to get elected to public office, or
to swindle his fellow knaves in some degrading commercial
enterprise, or to profess some nonsense or other in a college, or to
write so platitudinous a book as this one. And in the same way he
views it as a great testimony to his prowess at amour to yield up his
liberty, his property and his soul to the first woman who, in despair
of finding better game, turns her appraising eye upon him. But if
you want to hear a mirthless laugh, just present this masculine
theory to a bridesmaid at a wedding, particularly after alcohol and
crocodile tears have done their disarming work upon her. That is to