g in the house made her feel as in a
"luxurious cage." Yet she was by no means a feminist; she detested
"noisy suffragettes", thought women doctors and lawyers ridiculous, and
had been brought up to regard marriage as indissoluble.

Gradually out of the conflict, the chilling fear that she had made a
mistake which could not be rectified, the constant irritation and
annoyances, the revolt against her own sex feeling and her life
situation, arose the neurosis. It took the form mainly of sudden
unaccountable fears with faint dizzy feelings. The family physician on
the aside told me that it was "just a case of a damn fool woman with
everybody too good to her."

What constitutes a "damn fool" will include every person in the world,
according to some one else. It seemed obvious to me that J. was not
meant by nature to be a housewife or any kind of wife. Matrimonially she
was a misfit, unless she met some man of a type like herself, though I
doubt if any man could have pleased her. I doubt if her over-exacting
taste would not rebel against the animal in life itself. For though the
animal of life is essentially as fine as the human, certain types find
it impossible to acknowledge it in themselves.

At any rate I advised separation for a time,--six months at least. I
told the woman her reaction to her husband was abnormal and finicky. She
answered that she knew this but could not conceive of any change. We
discussed the matter in all its ramifications, and though she and her
husband agreed to the separation, I knew that he was determined to hold
her to her contract. She improved somewhat but I believe that such a
temperament is incompatible with marriage, at least to such a man. The
outlook is therefore a poor one.

Case VI. The over-conscientious housewife,--the seeker of perfection.

The woman whose history is to be discussed comes from a family of New
England stock, _i.e._ the Anglo-Saxon strain modified by New England
climate, diet, history, religion, and tradition into a distinct type.
This type, often traditionally conservative and often extraordinarily
radical, has this prevailing trait,--standards of right and wrong are
set up somehow or other, and a remarkably consistent effort is made to
maintain these inflexibly. However, the hyperconscientious are not
peculiarly New England alone; I have met Jewish women, Italians, French,
Irish, and Negroes who showed the same loyalty to a self-imposed ideal.

This lady, Mrs.