Submissiveness

“ Everybody knows the scene from an epic poem where a certain king is angered at a tactless remark by his queen, and therefore "shows his anger in his face, and strikes her in the nose so hard that he draws four drops of blood, at which the lady meekly says 'Many thanks. When it pleases you, you may do it again!'" Such submissiveness is the best way to disarm a husband's anger. ”

“ Another will attract you by her submissiveness; she will be your attendant, follow you romantically about, compromise herself to keep you, and be the millstone about your neck. You will drown yourself some day, but the woman will come to the surface. The least manoeuvring of these women of the world have many nets. ”

“ Submissiveness, clinging affection, humility, all the traits accounted distinctively feminine, and the natural and ever-increasing result of steady suppression of all stronger ones stood in the way of any resistance. ”

“ Those experiments which ascribe to girls a better memory for learning by rote than boys are explained in this way: they are due to the nullity and inanity of women, who can be saturated with anything and everything, whilst man only retains what has an interest for him, forgetting all else.
This accounts for what has been called woman’s submissiveness, the way she is influenced by the opinions of others, her suggestibility, the way in which man moulds her formless nature. Woman is nothing; therefore, and only therefore, she can become everything, whilst man can only remain what he is. ”

“ That is a beautiful ideal—for you—and it would no doubt produce, in course of time, a saintly submissiveness of character in your wife. But any woman who is to be subjected to such a course of training ought to be warned beforehand, and agree to accept it with her eyes open. ”

“ Humility, therefore, is that in the mind and in the heart of a man which is low down even to the very earth. A humble-minded man may not have learning enough to know the etymology of the name which best describes his character, but the divine nature which is in him teaches him to look down, to walk meekly and softly, and to speak seldom, and always in love. For humility, while it takes its lowly name from earth, all the time has its true nature from heaven. Humility is full of all meekness, modesty, submissiveness, teachableness, sense of inability, sense of unworthiness, sense of ill-desert. ”

“ I warn you that I may consent to become your wife! I have no persevering resistance in my nature. I cannot hold out forever against those I love. But I warn you, that if ever I consent, it will be under the undue influence of others! ”

“ Soon her beautiful breasts were exposed to my burning kisses. The flame of my love lit another in her heart, and forgetting her former self she opened her arms to me, making me promise not to despise her, and what would one not promise! The modesty inherent in the sex, the fear of results, perhaps a kind of instinct which reveals to them the natural faithlessness of men make women ask for such promises, but what mistress, if really amorous, would even think of asking her lover to respect her in the moment of delirious ecstacy, when all one’s being is centred on the fulfilment of desire? ”

“ Or else he surrenders himself to some woman who bears his name, loves him—to her who perhaps in innocence and ignorance believes that she dominates every instinct of his sex!—making her a wife that she may bear to him children; or thinking that marriage may screen him, or even (vain hope) 'cure' him! But oftenest, he flies from any woman, as her sexual self; wholly shrinks from her as from nothing else created; avoids the very touch of a woman's hand in his own, any physical contact with woman, save in a calm cordiality, in a sexless and fraternal reserve, a passionless if yet warm... ”

“ The great love story can only be founded upon liberty. Bring the plan of serfdom to a woman's nature, and one of two things takes place within her—submission utterly or outwardly. The sons of the submissive are neither conquerors of self nor takers of cities. The outwardly submissive woman may inwardly contain and foster a great dream—indeed, the fruits of these dreams have come to be—but more often the heart is filled with secret hatreds. ”

“ Show me the sweet side of your nature, the gentle, womanly side, and I will then be your suitor indeed, and a far more real and earnest one than though I had become the victim you intended me to be. You may not care for me; you may never care. But only let me see you accept for your own sake what I have said, in the right spirit, and I will at least ask you to care, as humbly and devotedly as man ever asked woman. For when she is her true self she is so far above us that we can only be humble. ”

“ A stroke of the sword is not for her. She must not only avenge herself, but she must forge her own arms. Someone suspects her; who? An outsider? She may hold him in contempt—her lover whom she loves? If so, it is her life that is in question, and she may not despise him."
"Her only recourse is silence."
"You are wrong; the lover who suspects her casts an aspersion on her entire life. I know it. Her plea is in her tears, her past life, her devotion and her patience. What will happen if she remains silent? Her lover will lose her by her own act and time will justify her. ”

“ For some women about she did entertain a passionless, well-regulated affection, but they were generally the poor, the afflicted, or the aged. It was, however, always necessary that the person so signalized should be submissive. ”

“ Unfortunately for me, I can not tell a woman whom I despise that I love her, even when I know that it is only a convention and that she will not be deceived by it. I have never bent my knee to the ground when my heart did not go with it. ”

“ Had I been able to forget my mistress, I should have been saved. How many there are who can be cured with even less than that. Such men are incapable of loving a faithless woman, and their conduct, under the circumstances, is admirable in its firmness. But is it thus one loves at nineteen when, knowing nothing of the world, desiring everything, one feels, within, the germ of all the passions? Everywhere some voice appeals to him. ”

“ Nature places an unerring punishment upon the woman, who, by incessantly using every whim, scheme or artifice, finally succeeds in dominating her husband. By forcing him to submit to her thousand and one demands and coercions, within a few years, he unconsciously becomes a submissive type and loses his sexual potency with her as the love-object. ”

“ Who can abide the test of our blessed Lord’s comment on the seventh commandment? He that looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. So that one knows not which to wonder at most, the ignorance or the insolence of those men, who speak with such disdain of them that are overcome by desires, which every man has felt in his own breast! The desire of every pleasure of sense, innocent or not, being natural to every child of man. ”

“ Yes, I admit it, offended pride is capable of driving me to extremes. If I should explain myself freely, you would have at your service all feminine hypocrisy; you hope that I will accuse you, so that you can reply that such a woman as you does not stoop to justify herself. How skilfully the most guilty and treacherous of your sex contrive to use proud disdain as a shield! Your great weapon is silence ”

“ A duty for a woman to submit to such a relation, when her own soul not only does not sanction, but loathes it! A duty in a woman thus to lay her health, her self-respect, and her very womanhood, on the altar of legalized sensualism! A duty to become a prostitute,—a mere tool 39of her husband’s gratification! It is a horrid mockery! As well talk to her of her duty to cut her throat! No man, but a sensualist, could ever accept the surrender of a woman’s person in such relation, when he knows it is made without any call in her own nature, and merely to satisfy his passion. ”

“ Does he yield to temptation abroad, forsake the partner of his bosom, and give himself up to sensual and inebriating habits, there is one heart that must bleed over his sins. Honor and pride, it may be, forbid her disclosing his errors, and the fire must consume her spirit in solitude. Needs she no support in this exigency? What can the world give her, adequate to her fathomless wants?
But still heavier trials befall this sex in their homes. Sickness visits the loved. ”

“ Before undertaking to play that most difficult part of wife, every girl ought to ask herself, Does she really care for the man enough to make her use her intelligence to understand him, and to try to keep him loving her? Or if she does not personally care enough for him to trouble about this—will the situation of her husband in the world satisfy her, and make the bondage, unleavened by love, of the care of house, servants, and possible children, worth while? ”

“ Then he said:
“I tell you, I don’t believe in love like that. I tell you, you want love to administer to your egoism, to subserve you. Love is a process of subservience with you—and with everybody. I hate it.”
“No,” she cried, pressing back her head like a cobra, her eyes flashing. “It is a process of pride—I want to be proud—”
“Proud and subservient, proud and subservient, I know you,” he retorted dryly. “Proud and subservient, then subservient to the proud—I know you and your love. It is a tick-tack, tick-tack, a dance of opposites.” ”

“ And as it is, will that same instinct which is in the subconscious mind of all women—and men too for the matter of that—which makes them want to fight to retain or retake what was theirs, influence her now unconsciously to feel some, even contemptuous, interest in me? ”

“ It is the subordination of weakness to strength. A certain amount of subordination depends upon the woman’s passive rôle in procreation. The aggressor always controls the subjected in love as in war. The element of pleasure found in passivism and ideal submission is, therefore, peculiar to the feminine sex. ”

“ Why will parents thus attempt to coerce the chainless affections? Why should so many females consent to marry the objects of their aversion, nay, sometimes, of their disgust, for the sake of a name?
Woman has been known to marry from the love of Conquest, and the desire to rule. The female heart is susceptible of the love of power, and one may seek, or consent to join herself to, a husband, for the sake of having a subject, over whom continually to reign. ”

“ And then she became dumb, and kissed me with the kisses she alone was able to give, and in comparison with which the caresses of any other woman were but an insipidity.
The constraint and the silence enhanced the furious tension of my nerves. Surprise, the joy of revenge, and, perhaps, a somewhat perverse jealousy inflamed my desires. The elastic firmness of her flesh and the supple violence of the movements wherewith she enveloped me demanded, promised, and deserved the most ardent caresses. ”

“ So woman entwines herself, the tendrils of her affection go out and they entwine themselves around the man; and what must be the depth of the depravity to which that man has fallen who ruthlessly tears asunder these gentle tendrils of affection! ”

“ Oh, the disgust that I feel when I hear matters pertaining to sex made light of. These relations to my mind are something sacred and pure. But the sensual man who believes that woman was made for his use only—the man who commits continual outrages upon the woman who is legally bound to him, upon her who bears the name of wife—such men defile the air with their very breath. ”

“ Learn, my dear, I beseech you, learn to subdue your own passions. Be the motives what they will, excess is excess. Those passions in our sex, which we take pains to subdue, may have one and the same source with those infinitely-blacker passions, which we used so often to condemn in the violent and headstrong of the other sex ”

“ We may perhaps all see in her want of self-control a grievous moral delinquency, but in her fortnightly periods of desire she fits perfectly into the law which, it appears to me, governs the normal sex-tides of the female of our species. ”

“ Where, indeed, could modest women find husbands from whom they would not continually turn with disgust? Modesty must be equally cultivated by both sexes, or it will ever remain a sickly hot-house plant, whilst the affectation of it, the fig leaf borrowed by wantonness, may give a zest to voluptuous enjoyments. ”

“ By keeping the suitor in suspense and doubt the imagination and the sentimental side of love are developed.EA
Modesty and coyness, though appearing to be natural and inherited sentiments, are nothing more than natural obstacles that tend to increase the value of the favor granted. Woman, for this reason, watches not only over her own modesty, but is anxious also to protect the modesty of her sister. She watches with jealous eyes that feminine modesty should not be offended in any way. ”

“ In order to influence other persons by suggestion, it is above all things necessary to try and associate the ideas which we suggest to them with sentiments of sympathy, so as to arouse in them the impression that the object to be attained is desirable and agreeable, or at any rate that it constitutes a necessity. The woman who surrenders to the mercy of her conqueror often experiences a kind of pleasure which is associated with the passiveness of her sexual sentiments. ”

“ If his intelligence perceived that there are qualities, individualities which claim exemption from ordinary rules, he had no desire to claim any such exemption for himself. Yet he found himself occupying the position of a man torn on the rack between a jealous wife for whom he has affection and esteem, and a mistress who compels his love. ”