Page:Marriage as a Trade.djvu/187

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MARRIAGE AS A TRADE
179

it is the servile attitude of mind and soul induced in her by the influences brought to bear on her in order to fit her for the compulsory trade of marriage or its unsanctified equivalent.

In earlier chapters I have dealt with these influences at considerable length, striven to show exactly what they are and pointed out that their aim was to induce the girl who would eventually become a woman to comform to one particular and uniform type—the type admired and sought after by the largest number of men. Hence the crushing out of individuality, the elimination of the characteristics that make for variety and the development of the imitative at the expense of the creative qualities. From generation to generation the imperative necessity of earning her livelihood in the only trade that was not barred to her—of making for herself a place in the world not by the grace of God but by the favour of man—has been a ceaseless and unrelenting factor in the process of weeding out the artistic products of woman's nature. The deliberate stunting and repression of her intellectual faculties, the setting up for her admiration and imi-