So the women triumph. They sit down below in the theatre, their
perfectly dressed hair gleaming, their backs very straight, their heads
carried tensely. They are not very noticeable. They seem held in
reserve. They are just as tense and stiff as the men are slack and
abandoned. Some strange will holds the women taut. They seem like
weapons, dangerous. There is nothing charming nor winning about them; at
the best a full, prolific maternity, at the worst a yellow poisonous
bitterness of the flesh that is like a narcotic. But they are too strong
for the men. The male spirit, which would subdue the immediate flesh to
some conscious or social purpose, is overthrown. The woman in her
maternity is the law-giver, the supreme authority. The authority of the
man, in work, in public affairs, is something trivial in comparison. The
pathetic ignominy of the village male is complete on Sunday afternoon,
on his great day of liberation, when he is accompanied home, drunk but
sinister, by the erect, unswerving, slightly cowed woman. His drunken
terrorizing is only pitiable, she is so obviously the more
constant power.
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