[80] Even in regard to the legendary Penelope we have to remember that tradition relates certain facts about her that cast some reflection upon her normality. Why, for instance, was she thrown into the sea by her parents? Both of her parents came from Sparta, and the Spartans did not scruple to destroy abnormal children. In fact, they regarded it as a religious duty to do so. At the very beginning of her life, therefore, some suspicion is cast which entitles us to question whether she can have been as desirable as the numbers of her suitors leads us to believe. Further, we may quite pertinently inquire what it was that ever induced Odysseus to spend twenty years of his life away from his wife, unless there were some secret and profound reason. It is true that his adventures are presented to us in the narrative as being forced upon him. But who has ever known an adventurer whose adventures were not inevitable? [81] The realism and methodical certainty with which adultery was expected in the wife by the absent husband both in antiquity and the Middle Ages is shown (1) by the general attitude of wonder and admiration maintained towards Penelope, and (2) by the famous _ceintures de chasteté_ in which the aid of the locksmith was enlisted in order to safeguard an absent husband’s honour. [82] The fact that during the war numbers of married women were thus served by men very much older than themselves, only shows how, as his years increase, a foolish man’s vanity sets ever greater store by a female’s favours. It is too easily forgotten that when a man is a born fool, old age does but increase his foolishness; it does not, as most people suppose, turn bad wine into good. [83] In one case this occurred, despite the fact that all the woman’s relatives and friends constantly urged her to rid herself of her useless mate by fair means or foul. [84] The _Laws of Manu_ make special provision for a woman who is childless owing to her husband’s fault. [85] A good deal of the pseudo-scientific literature of their day even tells them that the orgasm is just as important to them as to the male, and lays such stress upon it that they may be forgiven for misunderstanding its real value to their lives. [86] Women of a slightly more intellectual mould of mind generally become interested in some public movement or Cause, or begin to take up a new religion or philosophy, or express the desire to go in for acting at this stage. But the same forces are at work in them as in the woman described above—that is to say, their old environment having failed to procure them the whole physiological cycle which they need, their instincts urge them blindly to seek a fresh environment.