Since any discussion of woman’s place in society must necessarily be to some extent a study in superstition, one can not really have done with superstition until one is done with the subject. It has seemed to warrant some special attention at the outset of this work not only because the past and present status of womankind can not be explained without reference to it, but because the future of womankind will in large measure depend upon the expeditiousness with which it and those prepossessions which spring from it, are laid aside. The sum of these superstitions and prepossessions may be expressed in the generalization that woman is primarily a function; and wherever any remote approach to this generalization may be discerned in a discussion of her status or her rights--as it may at once be discerned, for instance, in the sentimental side of the work of feminists as staunch as Ellen Key and Olive Schreiner--at just that point the abdication of the scientific spirit in favour of superstition may be suspected. FOOTNOTES: [3] Among the Chinese, for example, the woman never goes near the kitchen. [4] According to news-reports on the day that this is written, Judge McIntyre of New York, sentencing a young woman in a criminal case, said: “When a woman is bad she is vicious and worse than a man, many, many times over.” [5] It finds grotesque expression now and then. I remember seeing in a San Francisco newspaper a few years ago this headline: “Accused of having immoral relations with a woman other than his wife.” [6] In the State of Maryland, if the wife be found to have been unchaste before marriage, the husband is entitled to a divorce; but premarital unchastity on the part of the husband gives the wife no corresponding ground. [7] As the only woman member of an editorial staff during a period of four years, I had ample opportunity for experience of this attitude. It was openly expressed only twice, both times, oddly enough, by women; but so universal was the unconscious assumption of inferiority that I may say without great exaggeration that it was only among my colleagues that I did not meet with it. [8] This was written, needless to say, before the casual taste of men set the fashion for women to be mincing and sickly. [9] Elie Faure. CHAPTER III INSTITUTIONAL MARRIAGE AND ITS ECONOMIC ASPECTS I