Brilliant and satisfying as her triumph may be to her personally, she frequently finds that it is resented by nature and by society.  She finds that nature lays pitfalls for her, cracks the ice of her heart and sets it aflame, often for absurd and unworthy causes.  She finds that the great mass of unconscious women commiserate or scorn her as one who has missed the fullness of life.  She finds that society regards her as one who shirked the task of life, and who, therefore, should not be honored as the woman who has stood up to the common burden.  When she senses this—­which is not always—­she treats it as prejudice.  As a matter of fact, the antagonism of Nature and Society to the militant woman is less prejudice than self-defense.  It is a protest against the wastefulness and sacrifice of her career.  It is a right saving impulse to prevent perversion of the qualities and powers of women which are most needed in the world, those qualities and powers which differentiate her from man, which make for the variety, the fullness, the charm, and interest of life.

Moreover, Nature and Society must not permit her triumph to appear desirable to the young.  They must be made to understand what her winnings have cost in lovely and desirable things.  They must know that the unrest which drove her to the attempt is not necessarily satisfied by her triumph, that it is merely stifled and may break out at any time in vagaries and follies.  They must be made to realize the essential barrenness of her triumph, its lack of the savor and tang of life, the multitude of makeshifts she must practice to recompense her for the lack of the great adventure of natural living.

And they see it, many of them, before they are out of college, and their militancy falls off like the cloak it generally is.  The girl abandons her quest.  In the early days she was likely to be treated as an apostate if, instead of following the “life work” she had picked out, she slipped back into matrimony.  I can remember the dismay among certain militant friends when Alice Freeman married.  “Our first college president,” they groaned.  “A woman who so vindicated the sex.”  It was like the grieving of Miss Anthony that Mrs. Stanton wasted so much time having babies!

The militant theory, as originally conceived, instead of increasing in favor, has declined.  There is little likelihood now that any great number of women will ever regard it as a desirable working formula for more than a short period of their lives.  But I am not saying that this theory is no longer influential.  It is probable that in a modified form it was never more influential than it is to-day.  For, while the Uneasy Woman has practically demonstrated that “making a man of herself” does not solve her problem, she has by no means given up the notion that the Business of Being a Woman is narrowing and unsatisfying.  Nor has she ceased to consider man’s life more desirable than woman’s.