In Roman times Ovid remarked (Ars Amatoria, lib. ii) that a woman fails to understand the art of love until she has reached the age of 35.  “A girl of 18,” said Stendhal (De l’Amour, ch. viii), “has not the power to crystallize her emotions; she forms desires that are too limited by her lack of experience in the things of life, to be able to love with such passion as a woman of 28.”  “Sexual needs,” said Restif de la Bretonne (Monsieur Nicolas, vol. xi, p. 221), “often only appears in young women when they are between 26 and 27 years of age; at least, that is what I have observed.”

Erb states that it is about the middle of the twenties that women begin to suffer physically, morally, and intellectually from their sexual needs.  Nystroem (Das Geschlechtsleben, p. 163) considers that it is about the age of 30 that a woman first begins to feel conscious of sex needs.  In a case of Adler’s (op. cit., p. 141), sexual feelings first appeared after the birth of the third child, at the age of 30.  Forel (Die Sexuelle Frage, 1906, p. 219) considers that sexual desire in woman is often strongest between the ages of 30 and 40.  Leith Napier (Menopause, p. 94) remarks that from 28 to 30 is often an important age in woman who have retained their virginity, erotism then appearing with the full maturity of the nervous system.  Yellowlees (art.  “Masturbation,” Dictionary of Psychological Medicine), again, states that at about the age of 33 some women experience great sexual irritability, often resulting in masturbation.  Audiffrent (Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, Jan. 15, 1902, p. 3) considers that it is toward the age of 30 that a woman reaches her full moral and physical development, and that at this period her emotional and idealizing impulses reach a degree of intensity which is sometimes irresistible.  It has already been mentioned that Matthews Duncan’s careful inquiries showed that it is between the ages of 30 and 34 that the largest proportion of women experience sexual desire and sexual pleasure.  It may be remarked, also, that while the typical English novelists, who have generally sought to avoid touching the deeper and more complex aspects of passion, often choose very youthful heroines, French novelists, who have frequently had a predilection for the problems of passion, often choose heroines who are approaching the age of 30.

Hirschfeld (Von Wesen der Liebe, p. 26) was consulted by a lady who, being without any sexual desires or feelings, married an inverted man in order to live with him a life of simple comradeship.  Within six months, however, she fell violently in love with her husband, with the full manifestation of sexual feelings and accompanying emotions of jealousy.  Under all the circumstances, however, she would not enter into sexual relationship with her husband, and the torture she endured became so