She goes for a soldier and delights in a masterful man...

She goes for a soldier and delights in a masterful man; some strange masochistic element in her thrills at the sight of strength, even when its victim is herself.” (7) “Occasionally this ancient joy in virility overrides her more recent economic sense, and she will marry a fool if he is brave. She submits gladly to a man who can command; if she seems less submissive in our days it is because men have less force of character than before….

“Woman’s interests are familiar, and normally her environment is the home; she is as deep as nature and as narrow us four walls. Instincts adapt her to the traditional and she loves the traditional as any expert loves the sphere which reveals his excellence. She is less experimental in mind and morals (barring certain metropolitan exceptions); if she resorts to ‘free love’ it is not because the finds freedom in it, but because she despairs of achieving normal marriage with a responsible male.

How gladly she would draw the man closer to her and absorb him into the home! Even if, in younger years, she thrilled to the shibboleths of political reform, and spread her affection thin over all humanity, she withdraws these tentatives when she finds an honest mate; rapidly she weans him and herself from this universal devotion and teaches him an intense and limited loyalty to the family. ‘I would give the world for you,’ the youth says in courtship’s ecstasy; and when he marries he does.

“It is just as well. The woman knows, without needing to think of it, that the only sound reforms begin at home; she serves as agent for the race when she transforms the wandering idealist into her children’s devotee. Nature cares little about laws and states, her passion is for the family and the child; if she can preserve these she is indifferent to governments and dynasties, and smiles at those who busy themselves with transforming constitutions.

If nature seems now to fail in this task of protecting the family and the child it is because woman has for the while forgotten nature.

But it will not be long defeated; she can at any time fall back upon a hundred reserve expedients; there are other races and other peoples, greater in number and extent than ourselves, through whom she can maintain her resolute and indiscriminate continuity” (8) This has been a short selection, of the statements of distinguished thinkers, about the differences between women and men, and their views in this connection.