The Hypothesis

These chapters are neither a defense nor an arraignment of womankind; they are, rather, a first-hand study of the ordinary, orthodox, middle-class women who have constituted the domestic type for more than a century; the exotic great lady and the morbid woman with a grievance have alike been omitted. They try to answer the query: why are women so? Is the characteristic behavior which is called feminine an inalienable quality or merely an attitude of mind produced by the coercive social habits of past times?

As a working hypothesis it is assumed that the women of the nineteenth century in America were for the most part what men expected them to be; modified only by the disintegrating, and at the same time reconstructive, forces of modern society. In other words, sex traditions rather than innate sex character have produced what is called "feminine" as distinguished from womanly behavior.