ration of woman resides in jealousy. It differs from male
jealousy, for the male is generally possessive, the female competitive.
I suspect that Euripides was generalizing rashly when he said that woman
is woman's natural ally. She is too sex-conscious for that, and many of
us have observed the annoyance of a mother when her son weds.
Competition is always violent, so much so that woman is generally
mocking or angry if a man praises ever so slightly another woman. If
she is young and able to make a claim on all men, she tends to be still
more virulent because her claim is on _all_ men. This is partly due to
the marriage market and its restrictions, but it is also partly natural.
No doubt because it is natural, woman attempts to conceal that jealousy,
nature being generally considered ignoble by the civilized world. In
this respect we must accept that an assumption of coldness is considered
a means of enticing man. It may well be that, where woman does not
exhibit jealousy, she is with masterly skill suggesting to the man a
problem: why is she not jealous? On which follows the desire to make her
jealous, and entanglement.

Because of these powerful preoccupations, when woman adopts a career she
has hitherto frequently allowed herself to be diverted therefrom by
love. Up to the end of the nineteenth century it was very common for a
woman to abandon the stage, the concert platform, and so forth, when she
married. A change has come about, and there is a growing tendency in
women, whether or not at the expense of love I do not know, to retain
their occupations when they marry. But the tendency of woman still is to
revert to the instinctive function. In days to come, when we have
developed the individual and broken up the socialized society in which
we live, when the home has been swept away and the family destroyed, I
do not believe that this factor will operate so powerfully. In the way
of change stand the remnants of woman's slavish habit. No longer a
slave, she tends to follow, to submit, to adjust her conduct to the wish
of man, and it is significant that a powerful man is seldom henpecked.
The henpecked deserve to be henpecked, and I would point out that there
is no intention in these notes to attempt to substitute henpecked
husbands for cockpecked wives. The tendency is all the other way, for
woman tends to mould herself to man.

A number of cases lie before me:

Case 61 married a barrister. Before her marriage she l