In the following essay, Bayuk defines Olenka within the stereotype of the "Submissive Wife," but praises Olenka's adaptability, maintaining she is a "True Survivor."

"The female nature is afflicted with natural defec-tiveness" stated Aristotle, the father of logic and truth; "women are deficient" proclaimed St. Thomas Aquinas; "frailty, thy name is woman" asserted Shakespeare; "woman was made to yield to man and put up with his injustice" proclaimed Jean Jacques Rousseau, the fighter for social justice, and Sigmund Freud summed it all up in a pseudo-scientific manner by ascribing to women an evergrowing envy of that particular male organ that we were deprived of by our Creator, either for the lack of virtues or the lack of material (only so much can be fashioned out of a rib, even a large one).

Who, may I ask, could doubt the words of these men of wisdom? Through the...