The Feminine Mind







The Maternal Instinct


A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for
his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and
with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings
seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him
for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of
the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase
makes it, feminine intuition. The mark of that so-called intuition is
simply a sharp and accurate perception of reality, an habitual
immunity to emotional enchantment, a relentless capacity for
distinguishing clearly between the appearance and the substance.
The appearance, in the normal family circle, is a hero, magnifico, a
demigod. The substance is a poor mountebank.


The proverb that no man is a hero to his valet is obviously of
masculine manufacture. It is both insincere and untrue:
insincere because it merely masks the egotistic doctrine that he is
potentially a hero to everyone else, and untrue because a valet,