Chapter 14 - Page 2

practice themselves. With that, complete physical idleness, an excessive
care of the body, a vast consumption of sweetmeats; and God knows how
the poor maidens suffer from their own sensuality, excited by all these
things. Nine out of ten are tortured intolerably during the first period
of maturity, and afterward provided they do not marry at the age of
twenty. That is what we are unwilling to see, but those who have
eyes see it all the same. And even the majority of these unfortunate
creatures are so excited by a hidden sensuality (and it is lucky if it
is hidden) that they are fit for nothing. They become animated only
in the presence of men. Their whole life is spent in preparations for
coquetry, or in coquetry itself. In the presence of men they become too
animated; they begin to live by sensual energy. But the moment the man
goes away, the life stops.

"And that, not in the presence of a certain man, but in the presence of
any man, provided he is not utterly hideous. You will say that this is
an exception. No, it is a rule. Only in some it is made very evident, in
other less so. But no one lives by her own life; they are all dependent
upon man. They cannot be otherwise, since to them the attraction of the
greatest number of men is the ideal of life (young girls and married
women), and it is for this reason that they have no feeling stronger
than that of the animal need of every female who tries to attract the
largest number of males in order to increase the opportunities for
choice. So it is in the life of young girls, and so it continues
during marriage. In the life of young girls it is necessary in order to
selection, and in marriage it is necessary in order to rule the
husband. Only one thing suppresses or interrupts these tendencies for
a time,--namely, children,--and then only when the woman is not a
monster,--that is, when she nurses her own children. Here again the
doctor interferes.

"With my wife, who desired to nurse her own children, and who did nurse
six of them, it happened that the first child was sickly. The doctors,
who cynically undressed her and felt of her everywhere, and whom I had
to thank and pay for these acts,--these dear doctors decided that she
ought not to nurse her child, and she was temporarily deprived of
the only remedy for coquetry. A nurse finished the nursing of this
first-born,--that is to say, we profited by the poverty and ignorance of
a woman to steal her from her own little one in favor of ours, and for
that purpose we dressed her in a kakoschnik trimmed with gold lace.
Nevertheless, that is not the question; but there was again awakened in
my wife that coquetry which had been sleeping during the nursing period.
Thanks to that, she reawakened