Talk about Prussianism!  The great Prussianism, with its ideal of uniformity, serviceability, and servility, has been the masculine ideal of woman’s life.  Man was to be diversified as life itself, was to taste all its experiences, but woman had her sphere, which belied all mathematics by being a narrow groove.

The nineteenth century changed all that,—­or started the change which is going on with extraordinary rapidity in the twentieth.  There are all kinds of women, at least potentially.  It may be true that woman tends less to vary than man, that she follows a conservative middle-of-the-road biologically, while man spreads out, but no one can be sure of this until woman’s early training to some extent resembles man’s.

1.  From the very start woman is trained to vanity.  Every mother loves to doll up her girl baby, and the child is admired for her dress and appearance.  Now it is an essential quality of the normal human being that he accepts as an ideal the quality most admired.  To the young child, the girl, the young woman, the important thing is Looks, Looks, Looks!  The first question asked about a woman is, “Is she pretty?” The pretty girls, the ones most courted, the ones surest on the whole to get married and to become housewives are usually spoiled by indulgence, petting, admiration, and this for a quality not at all related to strong character, and therefore vanity of a trivial kind results.

2.  Moreover, woman is trained to emotionality.  It may be that she is by nature more emotional than man, but again this can only be known when she has been trained to repress emotional response as a man is trained.  If a boy cries or shows fear, he is scolded, and training of one kind or another is instituted to bring about moral and mental hardihood.  But if a girl cries, she is consoled by some means and taught that tears are potent weapons, a fact she uses with extraordinary effect later on, especially in dealing with men.  If she shows fear, she is protected, sheltered, and given a sort of indulged inferiority.

3.  The romantic ideal is constantly held before her in the private counsel of her mother, in the books she reads, in the plays she witnesses, in all the allurements of art.  She is to await the lover, the hero; he will take her off with him to dwell in love and happiness forever.  All stories, or most of them, end before the heroine develops the neurosis of the housewife.  In fact, literature is the worst possible preparation for married life, excepting perhaps the courtship.  This latter emphasizes a distorted chivalry that makes of woman a petty thing on a pedestal, out of touch with reality; it is an exciting entrance into what in the majority of cases is a rather monotonous existence.

All these things—­vanity, emotionality, romanticism, courtship—­are poor training for the home.  They hinder even the strongest woman, they are fetters for the more delicate.