along with her troubles year in and year out, becomes old before her
time, and loses through constant pain and distress the freshness of
life.

It is impossible to separate the psychical factors from the physical,
largely because there is no separation. One of the aims of a woman's
life is to be beautiful, or at least good looking. From her earliest
days this is held out to her as a way to praise, flattery, and power. It
becomes a cardinal purpose, a goal, even an ideal.

Unlike the purposes of men this goal is attained early, if at all, and
then Nature or Life strip it away. The well-to-do woman or the
exceptional poor woman may succeed in keeping her figure and her facial
beauty for a relatively long time, though by the forties even these have
usually given up the struggle. For the poor woman the fading comes
early,--household work, bearing children, sedentary life, worry, and a
non-appreciative husband bringing about the fatal change.

I doubt if men see their youth slipping away with the anguish of women.
To men, maturity means success, greater proficiency, more
achievement,--means purpose-expanding. To women, to whom the main
purpose of life is marriage, it means loss of their physical hold on
their mate, loss of the longed for and delightful admiration of others;
it means substantially the frustration of purpose.

And I have noticed that the very worst cases of neurosis of the
housewife come in the early thirties, in women previously beautiful or
extraordinarily attractive. They watch the crows'-feet, the fine
wrinkles, the fat covering the lines of the neck and body with something
of the anguish that the general watches the enemy cutting off his lines