2. Moreover, woman is trained to emotionality. It may be that she is by
nature more emotional than man, but again this can only be known when
she has been trained to repress emotional response as a man is trained.
If a boy cries or shows fear, he is scolded, and training of one kind or
another is instituted to bring about moral and mental hardihood. But if
a girl cries, she is consoled by some means and taught that tears are
potent weapons, a fact she uses with extraordinary effect later on,
especially in dealing with men. If she shows fear, she is protected,
sheltered, and given a sort of indulged inferiority.

3. The romantic ideal is constantly held before her in the private
counsel of her mother, in the books she reads, in the plays she
witnesses, in all the allurements of art. She is to await the lover, the
hero; he will take her off with him to dwell in love and happiness
forever. All stories, or most of them, end before the heroine develops
the neurosis of the housewife. In fact, literature is the worst possible
preparation for married life, excepting perhaps the _courtship_. This
latter emphasizes a distorted chivalry that makes of woman a petty thing
on a pedestal, out of touch with reality; it is an exciting entrance
into what in the majority of cases is a rather monotonous existence.

All these things--vanity, emotionality, romanticism, courtship--are poor
training for the home. They hinder even the strongest woman, they are
fetters for the more delicate.

In taking up the special types predisposed to the nervousness of the
housewife it is to be emphasized that conditions may bring about the
neurosis in the normal housewife. Nevertheless, there are groups of
women who, because of their make-up or constitution, acquire the
neurosis much more easily and much more intensely than do the normal