Weak Man Strong Woman Quotes

Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.

...no woman can love a weak man hard enough to make him strong.

A strong man doesn't have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn't match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world.

When a strong woman finally gives up, it’s not because she‘s weak or because she no longer loves her man. To put it in the simplest terms…she’s just tired. She’s tired of the games…she’s tired of the sleepless nights…she’s tired of feeling like she’s all alone and the only one trying… she’s tired.

Modern civilization has made woman a little wiser, but it has increased her suffering because of man's covetousness. The woman of yesterday was a happy wife, but the woman of today is a miserable mistress. In the past she walked blindly in the light, but now she walks open-eyed in the dark. She was beautiful in her ignorance, virtuous in her simplicity, and strong in her weakness. Today she has become ugly in her ingenuity, superficial and heartless in her knowledge. Will the day ever come when beauty and knowledge, ingenuity and virtue, and weakness of body and strength of spirit will be united in a woman?

The truth is, no strong man takes advantage of a woman's vulnerability. It is a trait of the weak.

Don’t mistake softness for weakness. Only a strong man can be soft with a woman.

The Gethenians do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imaginations to accept. After all, what is the first question we ask about a newborn baby? ....there is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protected/ protective. One is respected and judged only as a human being. You cannot cast a Gethnian in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards 'him' a corresponding role dependant on your expetations of the interactions between persons of the same or oppositve sex. It is an appalling experience for a Terran

Woman knows man well enough where he is weak, but she is quite unable to fathom him where he is strong. The fact is that man is as much a mystery to woman as woman is to man. If that were not so, the separation of the sexes would only have been a waste of Nature's energy.

A weak man declares a woman a temptress and orders her to cover herself. A strong man covers himself and says nothing.

A weak man was intimidated by a strong woman.

The idea that women should be kept weak, uneducated, and dependent on a man in ancient civilization was somewhat misinterpreted and misused, if they were referring to biblical support. In fact, in Ancient Israel women could own property. The Book of Proverbs describes an ideal woman as a woman who has the means and capacity to make financial and business decisions. It says 'she considers a field and buys it'. (Proverbs 31:16) - Raising A Strong Daughter: What Fathers Should Know by Finlay Gow JD and Kailin Gow MA

The truth is, no strong man takes advantage of a woman’s vulnerability. It is a trait of the weak.

All women like men to be strong and decided and following out their careers. A woman wants to be motherly to a man and protect his weak side, but he must have a strong side too, which she can respect ... If you ever care for a woman, I don't advise you to let her see that you've got no ambition. Otherwise she'll get to despise you.

Nothing scares a weak man more than a strong woman.

Man when living is soft and tender; when dead he is hard and tough. All animals and plants are tender and fragile; when dead they become withered and dry. Therefore it is said: the hard and the tough are parts of death; the soft and tender are parts of life. This is the reason why the soldiers when they are too tough cannot carry the day; the tree when it is too tough will break. The position of the strong and great is low, and the position of the weak and tender is high.

Rich loved taking care of women. He would swoop in like Tarzan swinging on a vine, rescue them from whatever situation they found themselves in, and be their hero. He would make all the decisions, and he would be strong and dependable. "What a catch!" they would feel. But they did not see his inability to allow them to disagree or have an opinion. He could not yield to another person. He could not show weakness or vulnerability. He would make up for that inflexibility by being a very attractive "strong man" to women who would want to be swept off their feet more than they wanted a real person. So, they would be a perfect match—until he would see the other side of a passive, compliant woman. She would be sneaky and not tell him exactly what was going on. Then, lo and behold, one day she would really "mess up" and have a wish contrary to somthing he wanted or valued. Then, from his perspective, she had "changed" and had become "selfish." "She used to be nice, and now look!" But in reality, this is not what had happened. She had not changed. When they first met, she showed only half of who she was, hiding the other half, which would come out in sneaky, indirect ways. After a while, it came out directly, such as when she disagreed with him. Then he would cry, "Foul." So they both got what they asked for. In her compliance, she attracted a controller. In his control he attracted an adaptive person who had a secret side and was indirect. They were co-conspirators, and it always blew up.

I know that your laugh makes my heart race. The way you smile when you think no one is watching stirs something inside me that makes me desperate for more. The way your entire face lights up when you talk about Finn and Aubrey. I know what it feels like to have you in my arms, touch your lips, and fuck, I’d be lying if I said I’m not wishing for it again. I think about you more than I should. I know that you think you’re weak, but I see a strong, beautiful, and smart woman who deserves a man to worship her. More than any of that, Kristin, I should walk out and let both our lives be a hell of a lot less complicated than trying to start something, but here I am. You’re worth complicating things.

A man who fears a woman's strength is weak; a boy who embraces a woman's power is strong.

Being hurt by the man who’s supposed to love you doesn’t mean you’re not a strong woman. It means the man is weak.

My love for these books, at its purest, is not really about Peeta or anything silly and girly. I love that a young woman character is fierce and strong but hum in ways I find believable, relatable. Katniss is clearly a heroine, but a heroine with issues. She intrigues me because she never seems to know her own strength. She isn't blandly insecure the way girls are often forced to be in fiction. She is brave but flawed. She is a heroine, but she is also a girl who loves two boys and can't choose which boy she loves more. She is not sure she is up to the task of leading a revolution, but she does her best, even as she doubts herself. Katniss endures the unendurable. She is damaged and it shows. At times, it might seem like her suffering is gratuitous, but life often presents unendurable circumstances people manage to survive. Only the details differ. The Hunger Games trilogy is dark and brutal, but in the end, the books also offer hope - for a better world and a better people and, for one woman, a better life, a life she can share with a man who understands her strength and doesn't expect her to compromise that strength, a man who can hold her weak places and love her through the darkest of her memories, the worst of her damage. Of course I love the Hunger Games. The trilogy offers the tempered hope that everyone who survives something unendurable hungers for.

Proverbs of Hell (selected) In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. The cut worm forgives the plow. Dip him in the river who loves water. A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star. Eternity is in love with the productions of time. If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion. The nakedness of woman is the work of God. Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps. The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

Aren't you a Republican? Just about everyone is in the whole town of Learning." "No, I'm not a Republican. And I'm not no Democrat. I'm not nothing." "Why not?" "Because I'm not allowed to vote." "Me either. You have to be twenty-one to vote. I'm only twelve." "Reckon I'm soon looking at sixty." "Then why can't you vote? Is it because you're a Shaker?" "No, it's account of I can't read or write. When a man cannot do these things, people think his head is weak. Even when he's proved his back is strong. "Who decides?" "Men who look at me and take me not for what I be. Men who only see my mark, my X, when I can't sign my name. They can't see how I true a beam to build our barn, or see that the rows of corn in my field are straight as fences. They just seem me walk the street in Learning in clothes made me by my own woman. They do not care that my coat is strudy and keeps me warm. They'll not care that I owe no debt and I am beholding to no man.

A weak man is intimidated by a strong woman. Not because of what he thinks she can do to him physically,

It takes a strong woman to tolerate a weak man. That said, it takes a strong man to tolerate a weak woman, too.

What I said was that a man in love has one weakness, his woman. It’s his Achilles’ heel. But that same love makes the rest of him impenetrable, strong as a god.

An accurate view of evolution, in all its multifaceted and anarchic glory... We are all evolved creatures who share a common way or perceiving and responding to the world. And yet each of us is unique, the product on an irreproducible set of causal events. Given that we cannot judge people on the basis of their biology or their fitness with respect to some arbitrary criterion of optimality, we have to conclude that all human variants are equally valid. (This conclusion can be derived purely on ethical grounds as well.) None of us is advantaged because of evolution over any other, whether strong or weak, able-bodied or disabled, woman or man, black, white, or any other color. Simply existing as part of the human species, each person automatically has an inherent worth and dignity.

Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. "When you go to women," says Nietzsche, "take your whip with you." Sensible despots have never confined that precaution to women: they have taken their whips with them when they have dealt with men, and been slavishly idealized by the men over whom they have flourished the whip much more than by women. No doubt there are slavish women as well as slavish men; and women, like men, admire those that are stronger than themselves. But to admire a strong person and to live under that strong person's thumb are two different things. The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out. Accordingly, it is a truth everywhere in evidence that strong people, masculine or feminine, not only do not marry stronger people, but do not show any preference for them in selecting their friends. When a lion meets another with a louder roar "the first lion thinks the last a bore." The man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other quality in a partner than strength. The converse is also true. Weak people want to marry strong people who do not frighten them too much; and this often leads them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically as "biting off more than they can chew." They want too much for too little; and when the bargain is unreasonable beyond all bearing, the union becomes impossible: it ends in the weaker party being either discarded or borne as a cross, which is worse. People who are not only weak, but silly or obtuse as well, are often in these difficulties.

Yesterday I stood at the temple door interrogating the passersby about the mystery and merit of Love. And before me passed an old man with an emaciated and melancholy face, who sighed and said: "Love is a natural weakness bestowed upon us by the first man." But a virile youth retorted: "Love joins our present with the past and the future." Then a woman with a tragic face sighed and said: "Love is a deadly poison injected by black vipers, that crawl from the caves of hell. The poison seems fresh as dew and the thirsty soul eagerly drinks it; but after the first intoxication the drinker sickens and dies a slow death." Then a beautiful, rosy-cheeked damsel smilingly said: "Love is a wine served by the brides of Dawn which strengthens strong souls and enables them to ascend to the stars." After her a black-robed, bearded man, frowning, said: "Love is a divine knowledge that enables men to see as much as the gods." Then said a blind man, feeling his way with a cane: "Love is a blinding mist that keeps the soul from discerning the secret of existence, so that the heart sees only trembling phantoms of desire among the hills, and hears only echoes of cries from voiceless valleys." And a feeble ancient, dragging his feet like two rags, said, in quavering tones: "Love is the rest of the body in the quiet of the grave, the tranquility of the soul in the depth of Eternity." And a five-year-old child, after him, said laughing: "Love is my father and mother, and no one knows Love save my father and mother." And so, all who passed spoke of Love as the image of their hopes and frustrations, leaving it a mystery as before.

Many men are fascinated by the consciously evolving female who makes them feel free inside. But they're too unsure of their own standing to actually stay with such women. They want a sheepish, sort-of-dumb woman at home for them, then they imagine themselves being swept off their feet by a goddess somewhere outside. These are the kinds of men that aren't worth being with. You want to have a man who can sail a ship just as well as you can, a man who puts both his feet in the same boat at the same time, someone whose manhood is never defined by female docility.

For each man there are different perspectives, but at the core they are the same. Never violate a woman, nor harm a child. Do not lie, cheat or steal. These things are for lesser men. Protect the weak against the evil strong. And never allow thoughts of gain to lead you into pursuit of evil.

And the differences thence arising [between the constitution of men and women] are no ways sufficient to argue more natural strength in the one than in the other, to qualify them more for military labours. Are not the Women of different degrees of strength, like the Men? Are there not strong and weak of both sexes? Men educated in sloth and softness are weaker than Women; and Women, become harden'd by necessity, are often more robust than Men. (...) Woman may be enured to all the hardships of a campaign, and to meet all the terrors of it, as well as the bravest of the opposite sex.

But the people. The normal people. They were far worse. With no rule and no law, it became every man, woman, and child for themselves. There were no repercussions for crimes or violence—no one to run to if you were beaten or robbed. No police. No prisons. Not legitimate ones, anyway. Neighbors stole from neighbors. Stores were looted and supplies were hoarded, leaving children to starve in the gutters. It became the strong against the weak, and, as it turns out, the strong were usually jerks. Humanity loses faith in times like that. With no one to look up to, no one to believe in, we all became rats scrounging in the sewers.

Feelings of a Pimp They think I was a player because I was devoted to the game They thought I worked hard on my offense to break down these women’s defenses just to score They think it’s the body count that made me manipulate them into my arms to get between their legs They think I’m satisfied with a different woman in my bed every night When during the day, even my bed can feel the loneliness They think I love the easy women They think it’s for the cool points that my heart grew cold They think they have me figured out Another dog chasing after every female dog in the streets They think I’m happy with all the texting buddies, but no wife But they don’t know They don’t know how tired I am of this, how tired I am of myself How tired I am of living like this How tired I am of these games, but that’s the only way I can score with a chick They don’t know how after sleeping with these ladies, I wish I had more chemistry with at least one of them to cuddle, to give goodnight kisses and wake up beside They don’t know how loneliness consumes me With a phone filled with women’s numbers, I still feel unwanted and unworthy They don’t know these easy women make it easy for me to feel confident about myself; although it’s the wrong type of confidence I feel validated by them, I feel accomplished, I feel loved although I’m having sex with them, not making love They don’t know how tired I am of chasing fool’s gold Chasing fast women who would sleep with me in a heartbeat Leaving me with the empty feeling I felt before I started the chase The player in me is played out. I just want love, but that’s the only thing I can’t seem to find So, I keep pimping in hope of finding love Her insecurities were beautiful They opened the door for me as an opportunist She was the perfect candidate Oh so sweet, but oh so hurt How smart would I be if I didn’t capitalize? Some fellas get women drunk and have their way with them I was doing nothing wrong but pretending to be prince charming, just to get the same results I became what they needed emotionally I was the shoulder to cry on, the ear to listen to, the one person who understood I was a smooth criminal manipulating the innocent Did not feel an ounce of guilt because I was weak myself I was insecure I couldn’t help preying on vulnerable women In their weakness I found strength I was a coward, a “wannabe” player I was playing the wrong games, winning the wrong prizes The truth is, no strong man takes advantage of a woman’s vulnerability. It is a trait of the weak. Diary of a Weak Man

I learn this: “The word Ezer has two roots: strong and benevolent. The best translation of Ezer is: Warrior.” God created woman as a Warrior. I think about the tragedies the women in my life have faced. How every time a child gets sick or a man leaves or a parent dies or a community crumbles, the women are the ones who carry on, who do what must be done for their people in the midst of their own pain. While those around them fall away, the women hold the sick and nurse the weak, put food on the table, carry their families’ sadness and anger and love and hope. They keep showing up for their lives and their people with the odds stacked against them and the weight of the world on their shoulders. They never stop singing songs of truth, love, and redemption in the face of hopelessness. They are inexhaustible, ferocious, relentless cocreators with God, and they make beautiful worlds out of nothing. Have women been the Warriors all along?

Go back. Open the bedroom door and send young Aster down the stairs. Place the groom on his feet and draw him away from the bed. Wipe the sheet clean of the bride’s blood. Shake it straight and flatten its wrinkles. Slide off that necklace and return it to the girl as she races to her mother. Fix what has been broken in her, mend it shut again. Clothe him in his wedding finery. Let there be no light. Allow only shadows into this kingdom of man’s making. See him alone in the room. See him free of a father’s attention. See him step beyond the reach of elders and all who advise growing boys on the perils of weakness. Here is Kidane, shaking loose of unseen bindings. Here he is, gifting himself the freedom to tremble. All advice has been taken back and he is no longer the groom instructed to break flesh and draw blood and bring a girl to earthy cries. See this man in the tender moment before he takes his wife. See him wrestle with the first blooms of untapped emotion. Let the minutes stretch. Remove the expectations of a father. Remove the admonishments to stand tall and stay strong. Eliminate the birthright, the privilege of nobility, the weight of ancestors and blood. Erase his father’s name and that of his grandfather’s father and that of the long line of men before them. Let him stand in the middle of that empty bedroom in his wedding tunic and trousers, in his gilded cape and gold ring, and then disappear his name, too. Make of him nothing and see what emerges willingly, without taint of duty or fear.

All these small ideas that I am a man or a woman, Sick or healthy, strong or weak Or that I hate or love or have little power, are but hallucinations. Stand up then! Know that every thought and word That weakens you in this world is the only evil that exists. Stand as a rock; you are the Infinite Spirit. Say, "I am Existence Absolute, Bliss Absolute," and like a lion breaking its cage, break your chains and be free forever. What frightens you, what holds you down: Only ignorance of your true nature, of your blessedness; nothing else can bind you. You are the Pure one, the Ever-Blessed. Therefore, if you dare, stand on that-- mold your whole life on that. You are the one with the Eternal Soul. Know then that thou art He, and model your whole life accordingly; for those who know this and model their lives accordingly, will no more suffer in darkness.

Had Elizabeth’s opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing opinion of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort. Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence had vanished for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown. But Mr. Bennet was not of a disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his own imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly of their vice. He was fond of the country and of books; and from these tastes had arisen his principal enjoyments. To his wife he was very little otherwise indebted, than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement. This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given. Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of her father’s behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with pain; but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so strongly as now the disadvantages which must attend the children of so unsuitable a marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising from so ill-judged a direction of talents; talents, which, rightly used, might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife.

Meanwhile the Zenias of this world are abroad in the land, plying their trade, cleaning out male pockets, catering to male fantasies. Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur. The Zenias of this world have studied this situation and turned it to their own advantage; they haven't let themselves be moulded into male fantasies, they've done it themselves. They've slipped sideways into dreams; the dreams of women too, because women are fantasies for other women, just as they are for men. But fantasies of a different kind.

The first movie star I met was Norma Shearer. I was eight years old at the time and going to school with Irving Thalberg Jr. His father, the longtime production chief at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, devoted a large part of his creative life to making Norma a star, and he succeeded splendidly. Unfortunately, Thalberg had died suddenly in 1936, and his wife's career had begun to slowly deflate. Just like kids everywhere else, Hollywood kids had playdates at each other's houses, and one day I went to the Thalberg house in Santa Monica, where Irving Sr. had died eighteen months before. Norma was in bed, where, I was given to understand, she spent quite a bit of time so that on those occasions when she worked or went out in public she would look as rested as possible. She was making Marie Antoinette at the time, and to see her in the flesh was overwhelming. She very kindly autographed a picture for me, which I still have: "To Cadet Wagner, with my very best wishes. Norma Shearer." Years later I would be with her and Martin Arrouge, her second husband, at Sun Valley. No matter who the nominal hostess was, Norma was always the queen, and no matter what time the party was to begin, Norma was always late, because she would sit for hours—hours!—to do her makeup, then make the grand entrance. She was always and forever the star. She had to be that way, really, because she became a star by force of will—hers and Thalberg's. Better-looking on the screen than in life, Norma Shearer was certainly not a beauty on the level of Paulette Goddard, who didn't need makeup, didn't need anything. Paulette could simply toss her hair and walk out the front door, and strong men grew weak in the knees. Norma found the perfect husband in Martin. He was a lovely man, a really fine athlete—Martin was a superb skier—and totally devoted to her. In the circles they moved in, there were always backbiting comments when a woman married a younger man—" the stud ski instructor," that sort of thing. But Martin, who was twelve years younger than Norma and was indeed a ski instructor, never acknowledged any of that and was a thorough gentleman all his life. He had a superficial facial resemblance to Irving Thalberg, but Thalberg had a rheumatic heart and was a thin, nonathletic kind of man—intellectually vital, but physically weak. Martin was just the opposite—strong and virile, with a high energy level. Coming after years of being married to Thalberg and having to worry about his health, Martin must have been a delicious change for Norma.

He was known by three names. The official records have the first one: Marcos Maria Ribeira. And his official data. Born 1929. Died 1970. Worked in the steel foundry. Perfect safety record. Never arrested. A wife, six children. A model citizen, because he never did anything bad enough to go on the public record. The second name he had was Marcao. Big Marcos. Because he was a giant of a man. Reached his adult size early in his life. How old was he when he reached two meters? Eleven? Definitely by the time he was twelve. His size and strength made him valuable in the foundry,where the lots of steel are so small that much of the work is controlled by hand and strength matters. People's lives depended on Marcao's strength. His third name was Cao. Dog. That was the name you used for him when you heard his wife, Novinha, had another black eye, walked with a limp, had stitches in her lip. He was an animal to do that to her. Not that any of you liked Novinha. Not that cold woman who never gave any of you good morning. But she was smaller than he was, and she was the mother of his children, and when he beat her, he deserved the name of Cao. Tell me, is this the man you knew? Spent more hours in the bars than anyone but never made any friends there, never the camaraderie of alcohol for him. You couldn't even tell how much he had been drinking. He was surly and short-tempered before he had a drink and he was surly and short-tempered right before he passed out-nobody could tell the difference. You never heard of him having a friend, and none of you was ever glad to see him come into a room. That's the man you knew, most of you. Cao. Hardly a man at all. A few men, the men from the foundry in Bairro das Fabricados, knew him as a strong arm as they could trust. They knew he never said he could do more than he could do and he always did what he said he would do. You could count on him. So, within the walls of the foundry, he had their respect. But when you walked out of the door, you treated him like everybody else-ignored him, thought little of him. Some of you also know something else that you never talk about much. You know you gave him the name Cao long before he earned it. You were ten, eleven, twelve years old. Little boys. He grew so tall. It made you ashamed to be near him. And afraid, because he made you feel helpless. So you handled him the way human beings always handle things that are bigger than they are. You banded together. Like hunters trying to bring down a mastodon. Like bullfighters trying to weaken a giant bull to prepare it for the kill. Pokes, taunts, teases. Keep him turning around. He can't guess where the next blow was coming from. Prick him with barbs that stay under his skin. Weaken him with pain. Madden him. Because big as he is, you can make him do things. You can make him yell. You can make him run. You can make him cry. See? He's weaker than you after all. There's no blame in this. You were children then, and children are cruel without knowing better. You wouldn't do that now. But now that I've reminded you, you can clearly see an answer. You called him a dog, so he became one. For the rest of his life, hurting helpless people. Beating his wife. Speaking so cruelly and abusively to his son, Miro, that it drove the boy out of his house. He was acting the way you treated him, becoming what you told him he was. But the easy answer isn't true. Your torments didn't make him violent - they made him sullen. And when you grew out of tormenting him, he grew out of hating you. He wasn't one to bear a grudge. His anger cooled and turned into suspicion. He knew you despised him; he learned to live without you. In peace. So how did he become the cruel man you knew him to be? Think a moment. Who was it that tasted his cruelty? His wife. His children. Some people beat their wife and children because they lust for power, but are too weak or stupid to win power in the world.

The text begins by saying that the gods Anu, Enlil and Marduk – the leading deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon – appointed Hammurabi ‘to make justice prevail in the land, to abolish the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak’.4 It then lists about 300 judgements, given in the set formula ‘If such and such a thing happens, such is the judgment.’ For example, judgements 196–9 and 209–14 read: 196. If a superior man should blind the eye of another superior man, they shall blind his eye. 197. If he should break the bone of another superior man, they shall break his bone. 198. If he should blind the eye of a commoner or break the bone of a commoner, he shall weigh and deliver 60 shekels of silver. 199. If he should blind the eye of a slave of a superior man or break the bone of a slave of a superior man, he shall weigh and deliver one-half of the slave’s value (in silver).5 209. If a superior man strikes a woman of superior class and thereby causes her to miscarry her fetus, he shall weigh and deliver ten shekels of silver for her fetus. 210. If that woman should die, they shall kill his daughter. 211. If he should cause a woman of commoner class to miscarry her fetus by the beating, he shall weigh and deliver five shekels of silver. 212. If that woman should die, he shall weigh and deliver thirty shekels of silver. 213. If he strikes a slave-woman of a superior man and thereby causes her to miscarry her fetus, he shall weigh and deliver two shekels of silver. 214. If that slave-woman should die, he shall weigh and deliver twenty shekels of silver.

Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. "When you go to women," says Nietzsche, "take your whip with you." Sensible despots have never confined that precaution to women: they have taken their whips with them when they have dealt with men, and been slavishly idealized by the men over whom they have flourished the whip much more than by women. No doubt there are slavish women as well as slavish men; and women, like men, admire those that are stronger than themselves. But to admire a strong person and to live under that strong person's thumb are two different things. The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out. Accordingly, it is a truth everywhere in evidence that strong people, masculine or feminine, not only do not marry stronger people, but do not show any preference for them in selecting their friends. When a lion meets another with a louder roar "the first lion thinks the last a bore." The man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other quality in a partner than strength. The converse is also true. Weak people want to marry strong people who do not frighten them too much; and this often leads them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically as "biting off more than they can chew." They want too much for too little; and when the bargain is unreasonable beyond all bearing, the union becomes impossible: it ends in the weaker party being either discarded or borne as a cross, which is worse. People who are not only weak, but silly or obtuse as well, are often in these difficulties

These are the general propositions that form this Humility Code: 1. We don’t live for happiness, we live for holiness. Day to day we seek out pleasure, but deep down, human beings are endowed with moral imagination. All human beings seek to lead lives not just of pleasure, but of purpose, righteousness, and virtue. As John Stuart Mill put it, people have a responsibility to become more moral over time. The best life is oriented around the increasing excellence of the soul and is nourished by moral joy, the quiet sense of gratitude and tranquillity that comes as a byproduct of successful moral struggle. The meaningful life is the same eternal thing, the combination of some set of ideals and some man or woman’s struggle for those ideals. Life is essentially a moral drama, not a hedonistic one. 2. Proposition one defines the goal of life. The long road to character begins with an accurate understanding of our nature, and the core of that understanding is that we are flawed creatures. We have an innate tendency toward selfishness and overconfidence. We have a tendency to see ourselves as the center of the universe, as if everything revolves around us. We resolve to do one thing but end up doing the opposite. We know what is deep and important in life, but we still pursue the things that are shallow and vain. Furthermore, we overestimate our own strength and rationalize our own failures. We know less than we think we do. We give in to short-term desires even when we know we shouldn’t. We imagine that spiritual and moral needs can be solved through status and material things. 3. Although we are flawed creatures, we are also splendidly endowed. We are divided within ourselves, both fearfully and wonderfully made. We do sin, but we also have the capacity to recognize sin, to feel ashamed of sin, and to overcome sin. We are both weak and strong, bound and free, blind and far-seeing. We thus have the capacity to struggle with ourselves. There is something heroic about a person in struggle with herself, strained on the rack of conscience, suffering torments, yet staying alive and growing stronger, sacrificing a worldly success for the sake of an inner victory.

He'd found a sweet-water stream that I drank from, and for dinner we found winkles that we ate baked on stones. We watched the sun set like a peach on the sea, making plans on how we might live till a ship called by. Next we made a better camp beside a river and had ourselves a pretty bathing pool all bordered with ferns; lovely it was, with marvelous red parrots chasing through the trees. Our home was a hut made of branches thatched with flat leaves, a right cozy place to sleep in. We had fat birds that Jack snared for our dinner, and made fire using a shard of looking glass I found in my pocket. We had lost the compass in the water, but didn't lament it. I roasted fish and winkles in the embers. For entertainment we even had Jack's penny whistle. It was a paradise, it was." "You loved him," her mistress said softly, as her pencil resumed its hissing across the paper. Peg fought a choking feeling in her chest. Aye, she had loved him- a damned sight more than this woman could ever know. "He loved me like his own breath," she said, in a voice that was dangerously plaintive. "He said he thanked God for the day he met me." Peg's eyes brimmed full; she was as weak as water. The rest of her tale stuck in her throat like a fishbone. Mrs. Croxon murmured that Peg might be released from her pose. Peg stared into space, again seeing Jack's face, so fierce and true. He had looked down so gently on her pitiful self; on her bruises and her bony body dressed in salt-hard rags. His blue eyes had met hers like a beacon shining on her naked soul. "I see past your always acting the tough girl," he insisted with boyish stubbornness. "I'll be taking care of you now. So that's settled." And she'd thought to herself, so this is it, girl. All them love stories, all them ballads that you always thought were a load of old tripe- love has found you out, and here you are. Mrs. Croxon returned with a glass of water, and Peg drank greedily. She forced herself to continue with self-mocking gusto. "When we lay down together in our grass house we whispered vows to stay true for ever and a day. We took pleasure from each other's bodies, and I can tell you, mistress, he were no green youth, but all grown man. So we were man and wife before God- and that's the truth." She faced out Mrs. Croxon with a bold stare. "You probably think such as me don't love so strong and tender, but I loved Jack Pierce like we was both put on earth just to find each other. And that night I made a wish," Peg said, raising herself as if from a trance, "a foolish wish it were- that me and Jack might never be rescued. That the rotten world would just leave us be.

Consider: Anyone can turn his hand to anything. This sounds very simple, but its psychological effects are incalculable. The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be (as Nim put it) “tied down to childbearing,” implies that no one is quite so thoroughly “tied down” here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be—psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else. Consider: A child has no psycho-sexual relationship to his mother and father. There is no myth of Oedipus on Winter. Consider: There is no unconsenting sex, no rape. As with most mammals other than man, coitus can be performed only by mutual invitation and consent; otherwise it is not possible. Seduction certainly is possible, but it must have to be awfully well timed. Consider: There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter. The following must go into my finished Directives: when you meet a Gethenian you cannot and must not do what a bisexual naturally does, which is to cast him in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards him a corresponding role dependent on your expectations of the patterned or possible interactions between persons of the same or the opposite sex. Our entire pattern of sociosexual interaction is nonexistent here. They cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby? Yet you cannot think of a Gethenian as “it.” They are not neuters. They are potentials, or integrals. Lacking the Karhidish “human pronoun” used for persons in somer, I must say “he,” for the same reasons as we used the masculine pronoun in referring to a transcendent god: it is less defined, less specific, than the neuter or the feminine. But the very use of the pronoun in my thoughts leads me continually to forget that the Karhider I am with is not a man, but a manwoman. The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience. Back

But the bed I made up for myself was sufficiently uncomfortable to give me a wakeful night, and I thought a good deal of what the unlucky Dutchman had told me.I was not so much puzzled by Blanche Stroeve’s action, for I saw in that merely the result of a physical appeal. I do not suppose she had ever really cared for her husband, and what I had taken for love was no more than the feminine response to caresses and comfort which in the minds of most women passes for it. It is a passive feeling capable of being roused for any object, as the vine can grow on any tree; and the wisdom of the world recognizes its strength when it urges a girl to marry the man who wants her with the assurance that love will follow. It is an emotion made up of the satisfaction in security, pride of property, the pleasure of being desired, the gratification of a household, and it is only by an amiable vanity that women ascribe to its spiritual value. It is an emotion which is defenceless against passion. I suspected that Blanche Stroeve's violent dislike of Strickland had in it from the beginning a vague element of sexual attraction. Who am I that I should seek to unravel the mysterious intricacies of sex? Perhaps Stroeve's passion excited without satisfying that part of her nature, and she hated Strickland because she felt in him the power to give her what she needed.I think she was quite sincere when she struggled against her husband's desire to bring him into the studio; I think she was frightened of him, though she knew not why; and I remembered how she had foreseen disaster. I think in some curious way the horror which she felt for him was a transference of the horror which she felt for herself because he so strangely troubled her. His appearance was wild and uncouth; there was aloofiness in his eyes and sensuality in his mouth; he was big and strong; he gave the impression of untamed passion; and perhaps she felt in him, too, that sinister element which had made me think of those wild beings of the world's early history when matter, retaining its early connection with the earth, seemed to possess yet a spirit of its own. lf he affected her at all. it was inevitable that she should love or hate him. She hated him. And then I fancy that the daily intimacy with the sick man moved her strangely. She raised his head to give him food, and it was heavy against her hand; when she had fed him she wiped his sensual mouth and his red beard.She washed his limbs; they were covered with thick hair; and when she dried his hands, even in his weakness they were strong and sinewy. His fingers were long; they were the capable, fashioning fingers of the artist; and I know not what troubling thoughts they excited in her. He slept very quietly, without movement, so that he might have been dead, and he was like some wild creature of the woods, resting after a long chase; and she wondered what fancies passed through his dreams. Did he dream of the nymph flying through the woods of Greece with the satyr in hot pursuit? She fled, swift of foot and desperate, but he gained on her step by step, till she felt his hot breath on her neck; and still she fled silently. and silently he pursued, and when at last he seized her was it terror that thrilled her heart or was it ecstasy? Blanche Stroeve was in the cruel grip of appetite. Perhaps she hated Strickland still, but she hungered for him, and everything that had made up her life till then became of no account. She ceased to be a woman, complex, kind, and petulant, considerate and thoughtless; she was a Maenad. She was desire.

Wonder Woman represented modern America as leader of the free world, and champion of the downtrodden. She forsook her kingdom and immortality to make the whole world a better place and, most of all, to fight for the rights of females. Just as America emerged as a global peacekeeper, Wonder Woman's adventures took her wherever women were in peril and their freedom was threatened, like the planet Venus with its butterfly-winged women, or the subterranean paradise Eveland.'Ihe "loving ways of the Amazons" that she was sent to teach the world were presumably the wisdom of the matrilineal society that predated the Greeks. "I can make bad men good and weak woman strong!" she says, as she spreads her message of empowerment across "man's world.

It was a common fallacy among survivors that zombies were strong.  This was incorrect.  The average zombie, by itself, was weak with little muscle control.  The creatures were pure instinct. Whatever intelligence they had was gone with their first death, lost forever.  It was their numbers that gave them strength.  A strong man or woman with a weapon and their wits could easily take out ten to fifteen zombies.  But behind those ten to fifteen lay fifty or a hundred more, untiring, unrelenting in their search for flesh. A human tired, a zombie didn’t. This was their greatest strength.

there was compassion and courage in her southern-fried voice. “It was just life, child. Just life. Few things we got are predictable. Mostly it’s outta are control. Ya just gotta close yer eyes and hang on fer the ride sometimes. But there’s this one thing I know over all my years. I stay close to God, and I never regret a friendship, if’n it’s a man or a woman or a child; they’re all so special in their own way. And sometimes they hurt, and sometimes they’re happy, but I done learned never to regret ‘em. The only regrets I have are the times when I got scared and took the safe way, even when God told me not to. I did it a few times, and I always knew it was a mistake afterwards. And, eventually, I learned not to let my fears make my decisions for me. Cuz every time I did it, for the rest of my born days, I always wondered what might of been – what could of been, if I’d of been strong instead of weak.

not sure about the man being over the woman, that sort of stuff. We should look up some verses for guidance, as women.” “We should. Maybe we can find a married Christian woman to help us figure out the roles, Biblically speaking, since nobody like that is connected with the mission. It’s kind of a weak link in our God information chain, I think.” “What, you don’t trust Bob or Samson to give us that information?” Annabelle teased. “Of course I do. But just like in my weight-loss class, I can better relate to someone who has been in my shoes, and I think the same is going to be true when defining roles for ourselves as potential wives. I want that information from someone who is living that role.

A woman so weak for a man that they lost sight of themselves and the strong woman they were raised to be. 

Account of Love gave me several results, and its amazing: a. When man doesn’t make time to talk to woman, woman feels man is not caring her. b. When woman doesn’t make time to talk to man, man need to understand her problem. c. When man makes mistake he had to give clarifications by speaking truth or even lying. d. When woman makes mistake mad had to accept all excuses given by woman. e. When man suffers, most of the time he had to accept whatever happens. f. When woman suffers, man had to make woman happy by doing anything possible g. When love ends man need to hide all the tears as he feels he is strong. h. When love ends woman uses tears to blame the man for all the mistakes.

The story goes from a man to a woman, From strong love to weak compassion, From strong arms to feeble alms From smouldering eyes to a forest fire calm

Daylight slanted in through the bars making his eyes glint like polished steel. Motes of dust frenzied in his atmosphere as if drawing energy from the electric force of his presence. A thin ring of gold glinted in his left ear, and sharp cheekbones underscored an arrogant brow. He’d look stern but for his mouth, which was not so severe. It bowed with a fullness she might have called feminine if the rest of his face wasn’t so brutally cast. Mercy hadn’t realized she’d been staring at his lips, gripped with a queer sort of fascination until they parted and he spoke. “You were quite impressive back there.” “What?” Mercy shook her head dumbly. Had he just complimented her? Had they just been through the same scene? She’d never been less impressed with herself in her entire life. Would that she could have been like him. Smooth and unaffected. Infuriatingly self-assured. And yet…he’d only been that way after breaking the nose of the officer who'd struck her, and possibly his jaw. Lord but she’d never seen a man move like that before. “I listened to your deductions,” he explained. “From where you were hiding in the closet?” she quipped, rather unwisely. Something flickered in his eyes, and yet again she was left to guess if she’d angered or amused him. “From where I was hiding in the closet,” he said with a droll sigh as he shifted, seeming to find a more comfortable position for his bound hands. “You’re obviously cleverer than the detectives. How do you know so much about murder scenes?” Mercy warned herself not to preen. She stomped on the lush warmth threatening to spread from her chest at his encouragement, and thrust her nose in the air, perhaps a little too high. “I am one of only three female members of the Investigator Eddard Sharpe Society of Homicidal Mystery Analysis. As penned by the noted novelist, J. Francis Morgan, whom I suspect is a woman.” “Why do you suspect that?” His lip twitched, as if he also battled to suppress his own expression. “Because men tend to write women characters terribly, don’t they? But J. Francis Morgan is a master of character and often, the mystery is even solved by a woman rather than Detective Sharpe. His heroines are not needlessly weak or stupid or simpering. They’re strong. Dangerous. Powerful. Sometimes even villainous and complicated. That is good literature, I say. Because it’s true to life.” He’d ceased fighting his smile and allowed his lip to quirk up in a half-smile as he regarded her from beneath his dark brow. “Mathilde’s murderer now has one more person they’d do well to fear in you.” She leveled him a sour look. “Does that mean you fear me?” He tilted toward her. Suddenly—distressingly—grave. “You terrify me, Mercy Goode.

Mary nevertheless marvelled at another otherwise strong man being reduced by a pretty woman. What was there about the male character that could produce great strength of personality, yet equally great weakness when it came to females?

because like his uncle he was weak and could not perceive that a strong man likes a woman to be strong also as his helpmate, not his possession.

Mom wasn’t a weak person, or a wisp of a domineered housewife who hid in the background. Far from it. She was a vivacious, funny, and smart woman who loudly voiced her opinions, and would’ve been a suffragette had she lived in the twenties. She was gorgeous, with shoulder-length brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. She was strong and was an athlete as a teenager. She smoked, drank, and laughed out loud. A vital presence. She just never did understand or relate to children. She left school as a teenager and worked full-time in an office, then married young and became a mother and housewife. Now she found herself in New York in the swinging sixties, and despite my dad’s best efforts to make her the perfect square wife, she was energized, curious, and had time on her hands. She took music lessons, looked longingly at the bohemian lifestyle, and went off alone to the Newport Jazz Festival to see Miles Davis. Not about to be the happy homemaker, she wanted to party. Dad never became rich, and I’ve been told some blame fell upon my mom for failing to help him climb the career ladder. Instead of standing by her man, she acquired hippie habits, wore dashikis, and was a lousy teammate at cocktail parties.

That seems highly unlikely, Lady Helen. Two weak elements do not make a strong whole. We would prefer that you have a male Terrene. I am sure you are most intelligent, but you are still a woman and therefore reliant upon emotion rather than logic, and subject to your sensibilities as are all your sex. You cannot be expected to have the same strength, strategic mind or logic competence as a man. A male Terrene would counter that deficit.

I suppose this is what fools call poetic justice," said Miss Leonora, "which is just of a piece with everything else that is poetical—weak folly and nonsense that no sensible man would have anything to say to. How a young man like you, who know how to conduct yourself in some things, and have, I don't deny, many good qualities, can give in to come to an ending like a trashy novel, is more than I can understand. You are fit to be put in a book of the Good-child series, Frank, as an illustration of the reward of virtue," said the strong-minded woman, with a little snort of scorn; "and, of course, you are going to marry, and live happy ever after, like a fairy tale.

In the Bible, God called Gideon a mighty man of (fearless) courage. Gideon looked around and said, “Who’s He talking to? That’s not me.” God had an assignment for Gideon, something great for him to accomplish, but Gideon had not renewed his mind. He had these toxic thoughts. God saw him as strong, but Gideon saw himself as weak, defeated, not able to. God wanted him to lead the people of Israel and to defeat an opposing army, but Gideon said, “God, I can’t do that. I’m the least one in my father’s house. I come from the poorest family. I don’t have the education, the skills, the courage.” Notice how Gideon perceived himself compared to how God saw him. God said he was a mighty man of fearless courage. If God were to call your name today, He wouldn’t say, “Hello, you weak worm of the dust. Hello, you failure. Hello, you ol’ sinner. How’s My loser doing today?” God would say the same sort of thing to you that He said to Gideon: “Hello, Mary, you mighty woman of fearless courage.” Or “Hello, Bob, you mighty man of fearless courage.” I wonder if you would be like Gideon and say, “God, who are You talking to? Don’t You know what family I come from? Haven’t You seen the mistakes I’ve made? Let me remind You of some of them. God, You know I’m not that talented. Why are You calling me a mighty man?” The problem is, you have allowed these wrong thoughts to infect your thinking. But thank God this is a new day. You are beginning a new diet. You are starting a fast by cutting out every negative, discouraging, can’t do it thought. When those wrong thoughts come up, instead of saying like Gideon, “I’m not able. Who am I?” Turn it around and say, “I know who I am. I am well able. I’m ready for my assignment. God I am who You say I am.” I believe in the coming days God will present you with new opportunities. New doors will open. New people will come across your path. Maybe there will even be a new career opportunity. If you are to reach a new level, you must have a new way of thinking. You have to clean out the old so you’ll have room for the new. I’m asking you to detox all the garbage telling you what you’re not and what you can’t do. Remove all those strongholds. Detox little dreams. Detox low self-esteem. Detox the negative words. Stay on your diet. Every morning go through a good cleanse. Start the day off in faith. If you’ll guard your mind and instead of letting it get toxic keep it full of faith-filled thoughts, God promises you’ll overcome every obstacle, you’ll defeat every enemy, and every dream and every desire God has put in your heart will come to pass.

In Zilboorg’s interpretation of the primal scene, women become sexual and economic slaves in the family. The co-operative socialist William Thompson provided a similar conjectural history of the origin of marriage. He argued that, ‘in the beginning’, men’s greater strength, aided by cunning, enabled them to enslave women. Men would have turned women into mere labourers except that they depend on women to satisfy their sexual, desires. If men had no sexual desire, or if the propagation of the species did not depend on men’s intervention in a form which also provided sexual gratification, there would have been no need for the institution in which ‘each man yokes a woman to his establishment, and calls it a contract.’ Women are ‘parcelled out amongst men, . . . one weak always coupled and subjected to one strong’.

That’s what you do when you go looking for a husband. You don’t look at what he looks like or what he’s got. You look at the man on the inside. Is he strong or weak? Weak means you could run over him, and no woman wants a weakling. Is he strong enough to make you feel safe and secure in his arms without taking who you are away from you? Are you going to have to fight with him occasionally? Does he make you feel all tingly and alive? Does he make your nerves stand on end just by touching your arm in a café?

I’d never yearned for possession the way I did with Dante. I was a woman who valued my independence fiercely so I’d always thought that the idea of belonging to someone else was a direct contradiction to my independence. I’d been wrong. Owning the heart of a man like Dante Salvatore didn’t make me weak, it made me strong. I was proud to be seen as his because I was proud of the man he was and the woman he helped me to become.

What honor is granted to Patience, to have God as her Debtor! And not without reason: for she keeps all His decrees; she has to do with all His mandates. She fortifies faith; is the pilot of peace; assists charity; establishes humility; waits long for repentance; sets her seal on confession; rules the flesh; preserves the spirit; bridles the tongue; restrains the hand; tramples temptations under foot; drives away scandals; gives their crowning grace to martyrdoms; consoles the poor; teaches the rich moderation; overstrains not the weak; exhausts not the strong; is the delight of the believer; invites the Gentile; commends the servant to his lord, and his lord to God; adorns the woman; makes the man approved; is loved in childhood, praised in youth, looked up to in age; is beauteous in either sex, in every time of life.

A WEAK MAN CAN’T LOVE A STRONG WOMAN. HE WON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH HER.

There is always dawn even after the darkest nights." "... he pointed to a stringy plant, seaweed that clasped its greenish tendrils tight around a rock. "Holdfast," he told me...It was a noun. The seaweed was made in such a way it could not loose its hold on the rock's surface. They were bound together by their very nature...It's how we are in God's sight. Man and God, a holdfast." "But are we not a holdfast, too? You and I?" "Human beings can separate," he said. But not each of us from our Creator. We are bound in storms, in trials, even unto death." He didn't know what it was like to live on the outside, to be a woman alone and dependent on the generosity of others. He didn't know how weak and empty it made a person feel to take hold of a strong hand and not know when it might gruel rather than guide. ...there were challenges, but none too big for God to turn around...But no, I must not dwell on what was past. I had made the best decision I could then; that's what I had to remember.

You believe in God. If you do, believe in the real God. "Thou art the man, thou the woman, thou the young man walking in the strength of youth, thou the old man tottering with his stick." Thou art weakness. Thou art fear. Thou art heaven, and Thou art hell. Thou art the serpent that would sting. Come thou as fear! Come thou as death! Come thou as misery! All weakness, all bondage is imagination. Speak one word to it, it must vanish. Do not weaken! There is no other way out. Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition. Face the truth as it is! If death comes that is the worst of our miseries let it come! We are determined to die game. That is all the religion I know. I have not attained to it, but I am game. struggling to do it. I may not, but you may. Go on!

A strong woman couldn’t be weak to harbour feelings for a man who didn’t care for them.

And she had had her pick of young men, was irresistible to the easily impressed. If she had married a weak man she would always have retained the upper hand. Not perhaps have known true happiness, but on the other hand never have known doubt. She would have stayed in character, stayed safe. Instead she had lighted on a strong man, and had instantly gone under. The doom, the terrible doom of a woman like that in thrall to the wrong man! Unused to circumspection, she had been revealed as simple, obstinate, and finally without resource, disarmed. This discovery had left her with a kind of hatred, which, as surely as anything else, would militate against any kind of happiness, which concessions might just bring about. But with a man like Jack, she thought, one could not count on happiness anyway. Women would find him attractive, and he would find them convenient. He was not made for conventional alliances.

I think most Pelphian men are just leery of women. I really do. They’ll say, ‘No, no, no, women are weak. They’re foolish. They need looking after and direction.’ But I think deep down they can’t forget that they came out of a woman, were nursed by a woman, and had their little minds sculpted by one as well. When they grow up, just the thought of it makes them uneasy. But rather than face their fear, they look for ways to dominate and possess us, to create proof that we are weak, and they are strong. I’ll tell you this: The harder a man brags about his thunderous escapades in the lady’s boudoir, the more frightened he is. I’m sure you’ve noticed how much they love giving us diminutive nicknames. The Mermaid, the Leaping Lady …” “The Gold Watch?” “Exactly, because we shake them to their infant bones.” “Cowards.” “Ah, but there is nothing so dangerous as a coward!

I bring my hands to my face and I sob, because I feel more pain for that man out there, knowing what he went through as a child, than I feel for myself. And that doesn’t make me feel selfless or strong. It makes me feel pathetic and weak. I’m supposed to hate him. I’m supposed to be the woman my mother was never strong enough to be.