Page:Fielding - Sex and the Love Life.pdf/136
anything like its complete sense the art of love in marriage.
The husband suffers from his own short-comings, and becomes dissatisfied, often embittered. His wife, physically unsatisfied, and spiritually dissatisfied, is equally at sea, and baffled by a situation which for her has no solution. The solution lies in his hands, if he but knew the way.
Woman's Subconscious Maternal Solicitude. Walter M. Gallichan says in this connection: "Those who are frustrated resort to old adages for consolation, and profess that women's passions are cold by a design of Nature. Men have themselves to blame for their ill-success in this research. The standards of feminine virtue, modesty, reserve and reticence have been set up by men, as the dominating sex; and woman's dependence on the breadwinner and the protector of the brood has caused her subservience to man. Any divergence from tradition instituted by man as the patriarch, or supreme head of the family, has brought penalties and sorrow to women.
"The dread of arousing dislike is one of the origins of sex-modesty. Women all the world over possess a native modesty; and among primitive tribes the instinct is often very marked, and is deep-rooted in the female sex, though the form of expression varies according to race. Civilized women are forced by convention to preserve extreme reticence upon their most intimate, and therefore highly vital, desires, feelings and deepest emotions, because masculine opinion is generally in favor of vestal ignorance.
"Her deliberations may seem evidence of coldness and calculation. In all cases where her heart is vitally concerned her hesitancy is not affectation, but the manifestation of a subconscious maternal solicitude. Her choice is inexplicable to herself in a set formula.
"A man is more impetuous, sudden, aggressive and confi-