Case V. The hyperaesthetic woman.

Mrs. J.F. is twenty-seven years of age. She was born in the United
States, of middling well-to-do people. Her father was a gruff, hearty
man, not in the least bit finicky, who really despised manners and the
like, though he was conventional enough in his own way. Her mother was
an old-fashioned housewife, fond of her home and family, in fact perhaps
more attached to the former than the latter. She hated servants and got
along without them (except for a day woman) until she became rather too
old to do the work.

J.'s sister and two brothers were duplicates of the parents,--hearty,
stolid, and remarkably plain looking. J., the younger sister, though not
the youngest in the family, was as different from her family as if she
had sprung from another stock. She was slender, very pretty, with a
quick, alert mind which jumped at conclusions, because labored analysis
fatigued it. Above all, from the very start of life she was sensitive to
a degree that perplexed her family, who were however intensely
sympathetic because they adored her. This adoration arose from the fact
that J. was brighter and prettier than most of her friends, and that her
cleverness in many directions--music, writing, talking, handiwork--was
the talk of their little group.

This sensitiveness arose from two main factors. First, an egoism
fostered by the worship of her friends and the leadership of her
group,--an egoism which led her to regard as a sort of insult anything
disagreeable. Accustomed to praise, the least criticism implied or
outspoken cut like a knife; accustomed to being waited upon, she
resented physical discomfort of the slightest kind. Second, there must
also have been an actual physical sensitiveness to sights, sounds,
smells, tastes, etc. that made her perceive what others failed to
notice. This led to an artistry manifested by her nice work in music and
decoration and also by an excessive displeasure at the inartistic.

With this training, experience, and natural temperament she should have
married a rich collector of art products, who would have added her to
his collection and cherished her as his most fragile possession.
Instead, through the working of that strange law of contraries by which
Nature strikes averages between extremes, she fell in love with a hulk
of a man whose ideas on art were limited to calling a picture "pretty",
who loved sports and the pleasures of the table, and whose business