Woman’s Weak Dependency
By Gertrude Atherton
(American contemporary. Said by the London critics to be the most brilliant of American women novelists. The following is from “Julia France and Her Times.”)
No wonder so few women had left an impression on history. How could any brain, even if endowed with true genius, reach the highest order of development while the character remained placid in its willing dependence upon the reigning sex? And man had despised woman through the ages, even when most enslaved by her, knowing that on him depended her very existence. He had the physical strength to wring her neck, and the legal backing to treat her as partner or servant, whichever he found convenient.