Even those of the community whose life duties took them out in their world, and who were consequently more objective than women, even the men, under such conditions, grew self-examining to the degree of a proverb, “The bother with the Yankee is that he rubs badly at the juncture of the soul and body.” In such a life as this first arose the subjective characteristics of the New England woman at which so many gibes have been written, so many flings spoken; at which so many burly sides have shaken with laughter ἄσβεστος. Like almost every dwarfed or distorted thing in the active practical world, “New England subjectivity” is a result of the shortsightedness of men, the assumption of authority of the strong over the weak, and the wrongs they have to advance self done one another. Nowadays, in our more objective life, this accent of the ego is pronounced irritating. But God’s sequence is apt to be irritating. The New England woman’s subjectivity is a result of what has been--the enslaving by environment, the control by circumstance, of a thing flexible, pliant, ductile--in this case a hypersensitive soul--and its endeavor to shape itself to lines and forms men in authority dictated. Cut off from the larger world, this woman was forced into the smaller. Her mind must have field and exercise for its natural activity and constructiveness. Its native expression was in the great objective world of action and thought about action, the macrocosm; stunted and deprived of its birthright, it turned about and fed upon its subjective self, the microcosm. Scattered far and wide over the granitic soil of New England there have been the women unmarried. Through the seafaring life of the men, through the adventures of the pioneer enchanting the hot-blooded and daring; through the coaxing away of sturdy youthful muscle by the call of the limitless fat lands to the west; through the siren voice of the cities; and also through the loss of men in war--that untellable misery--these less fortunate women--the unmarried--have in all New England life been many. All the rounding and relaxing grace and charm which lie between maid and man they knew only in brooding fancy. Love might spring, but its growth was rudimentary. Their life was not fulfilled. There were many such spinners. These women, pertinacious at their tasks, dreamed dreams of what could never come to be. Lacking real things, they talked much of moods and sensations. Naturally they would have moods. Human nature will have its confidant, and naturally they talked to one another more freely than to their married sisters. Introspection plus introspection again. A life vacuous in external events and interrupted by no masculine practicality--where fluttering nerves were never counterpoised by steady muscle--afforded every development to subjective morbidity.