realist. She sees clearly that, in a world dominated by second-rate
men, the special capacities of the second-rate man are esteemed
above all other capacities and given the highest rewards, and she
endeavours to get her share of those rewards by marrying a
second-rate man at the to of his class. The first-rate man is an
admirable creature; his qualities are appreciated by every
intelligent woman; as I have just said, it may be reasonably argued
that he is actually superior to God. But his attractions, after a
certain point, do not run in proportion to his deserts; beyond that he
ceases to be a good husband. Hence the pursuit of him is chiefly
maintained, not by women who are his peers, but by women who
are his inferiors.


Here we unearth another factor: the fascination of what is strange,
the charm of the unlike, hliogabalisme. As Shakespeare has put it,
there must be some mystery in love--and there can be no mystery
between intellectual equals. I dare say that many a woman marries
an inferior man, not primarily because he is a good provider (though
it is impossible to imagine her overlooking this), but because his
very inferiority interests her, and makes her want to remedy it and
mother him. Egoism is in the impulse: it is pleasant to have a
feeling of superiority, and to be assured that it can be maintained. If
now, that feeling he mingled with sexual curiosity and economic
self-interest, it obviously supplies sufficient motivation to account
for so natural and banal a thing as a marriage. Perhaps the
greatest of all these factors is the mere disparity, the naked
strangeness. A woman could not love a man, as the phrase is, who
wore skirts and pencilled his eye-brows, and by the same token she
would probably find it difficult to love a man who matched perfectly