another medical authority of the same period stated in regard to the most
simple physical sign of healthy sexual emotion that it "only happens in
lascivious women." This final triumph of the masculine ideals and rule of
life was, however, only achieved slowly. It was the culmination of an
elaborate process of training. At the outset men had found it impossible
to speak too strongly of the "wantonness" of women. This attitude was
pronounced among the ancient Greeks and prominent in their dramatists.
Christianity again, which ended by making women into the chief pillars of
the Church, began by regarding them as the "Gate of Hell." Again, later,
when in the Middle Ages this masculine moral order approached the task of
subjugating the barbarians of Northern Europe, men were horrified at the
licentiousness of those northern women at whose coldness they are now
shocked.

That, indeed, was, as Montaigne had seen, the central core of conflict in
the rule of life imposed by men on woman. Men were perpetually striving,
by ways the most methodical, the most subtle, the most far-reaching, to
achieve a result in women, which, when achieved, men themselves viewed
with dismay. They may be said to be moved in this sphere by two passions,
the passion for virtue and the passion for vice. But it so happens that
both these streams of passion have to be directed at the same fascinating
object: Woman. No doubt nothing is more admirable than the skill with
which women have acquired the duplicity necessary to play the two
contradictory parts thus imposed upon them. But in that requirement the
play of their natural reactions tended to become paralysed, and the
delicate mechanism of their instincts often disturbed. They were
forbidden, except in a few carefully etiquetted forms, the free play of
courtship, without which they could not perform their part in the erotic
life with full satisfaction either to themselves or their partners. They
were reduced to an artificial simulation of coldness or of warmth,