acts in the manner which makes her most pleasing to men. And--always
with the rather definite realization before her of what a dreadful
thing it is to be an old maid--she has naively insisted that her
sisters shall play well within the game, and has become herself the
most strict censor of that morality which has become traditionally
associated with woman. Fearing the obloquy which the world attaches to
a bad woman, she throws the first stone at any woman who bids for the
favor of men by overstepping the modesty of nature. Morality, in the
most general sense, represents the code under which activities are
best carried on, and is worked out in the school of experience. It
is pre-eminently an adult and a male system, and men are intelligent
enough to recognize that neither women nor children have passed
through this school. It is on this account that, while man is
merciless to woman from the standpoint of personal behavior, he
exempts her from anything in the way of contractual morality, or views
her defections in this regard with allowance and even with amusement.

In the absence of any participation in commercial activity and with no
capital but her personal charms and her wits, and with the possibility
of realizing on these only through a successful appeal to man,
woman naturally puts her best foot first. It was, of course, always
one of the functions of the female to charm the male; but so long
as woman maintained her position of economic usefulness and her
quasi-independence she had no great problem, for there was never a
chance in primitive society, any more than in animal society, that
a woman would go unmated. But when through man's economic and social
organization, and the male initiative, she became dependent, and
when in consequence he began to pick and choose with a degree
of fastidiousness, and when the less charming women were not
married--especially when "invidious distinctions" arose between the
wed and unwed, and the desirably wed and the undesirably wed-woman
had to charm for her life; and she not only employed the passive arts
innate with her sex, but flashed forth in all the glitter which had
been one of man's accessories in courtship, but which he had dispensed
with when the superiority acquired through occupational pursuits
enabled him to do so. Under a new stimulation to be attractive, and
with the addition of ornament to the repertory of her charms, woman
has assumed an almost aggressive attitude