American ladies are known abroad for two distinguishing traits (besides, possibly, their beauty and self-reliance), and these are their ill-health and their extravagant devotion to dress.
The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men's theories of women, as they alwayshave done. When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to be. When a woman is hysterical it's because she doesn't quite know what to be, which pattern to follow, which man's picture of woman to live up to.
It is strange how little sharpsightedness women possess; they only notice whether they please, then whether they arouse pity, and finally, whether you look for compassion from them. That is all; come to think of it, it may even be enough, generally speaking.
Woman is the embodiment of sacrifice and suffering and her advent to public life should, therefore, result in purifying it, in restraining unbridled ambition and accumulation of property.