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