the test! The servant and the mistress are a sort of "complete woman" when considered as a "whole."[1]
The consequences of this theory are fully borne out by experience. The Xanthippe is the woman who has the least resemblance to the hysterical type. She vents her spleen (which is really the outcome of unsatisfied sexual desires) on others, whereas the hysterical woman visits hers on herself. The "shrew" detests other women, the "servant" detests herself. The drudge weeps out her woes alone, without really feeling lonely—loneliness is identical with morality, and a condition which implies true duality or manifoldness; the shrew hates to be alone because she must have some one to scold, whilst hysterical women vent their passion on themselves. The shrew lies openly and boldly but without knowing it, because it is her nature to think herself always in the right, and she insults those who contradict her. The servant submits wonderingly to the demands made of her which are so foreign to her nature: the hypocrisy of this pliant acquiescence is apparent in her hysterical attacks when the conflict with her own sexual emotions begins. It is because of this receptivity and susceptibility that hysteria and the hysterical type of woman are so leniently dealt with: it is this type, and not the shrewish type, that will be cited in opposition to my views.[2]
Untruthfulness, organic untruthfulness, characterises both types, and accordingly all women. It is quite wrong to say
- ↑ A real dame would never dream of asking her husband what she was to do, what she is to give him for dinner, &c.; the hysterical woman, on the contrary, is always lacking in ideas, and wants suggestions from others. This is a rough way of indicating the two types.
- ↑ It is the « yielding type" and not the virago type of woman that men think capable of love. Such a woman's love is only the mental sense of satisfaction aroused by the maleness of some particular man, and, therefore, it is only possible with the hysterical; it has nothing to do with her individual power of loving, and can have nothing to do with it. The bashfulness of woman is also due to her "obsession" by one man; this also causes her neglect of all other men.
