Page:Marriage as a Trade.djvu/136

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
128
MARRIAGE AS A TRADE

training and education has been, as I have shown, not to develop their individuality and capacities, but to make themselves and their actions pleasing to the men with whom they may happen to come in contact; and, that being so, approval from the men with whom they may happen to come in contact is naturally a thing of the utmost importance to them. To lack it is to lack the whole reward of a well-spent life. By women with this narrow outlook on the world superficial courtesies and superficial deference are interpreted to mean approval and, therefore, success in pleasing—almost the only form of success open to them. Further, the lives of such women are usually sheltered, and thus they do not have very much opportunity of realizing that the meed of ceremony to which they are accustomed is largely a tribute paid, not to themselves or to their womanhood, but to the particular leisured class to which they happen to belong.

Whatever the reason, it is certain that many women of the "comfortable" class do cling desperately and rather pathetically to the idea of their little privileges in this respect; I have