This is a strange title for a strange article, in which the singular English writer (D. H. Lawrence) tears the borrowed masks from the faces of women, so that beneath them a glaring and grave truth is revealed, the sum of which is that woman has never for a single day lived her natural life, and has never lived her true self at all.

The article was published in 1928, but twenty-nine years do not work miracles in changing social phenomena. Does that mean, then, that women, alas, still go about with carnival faces, and that the chance for them to appear as women of sound femininity has never presented itself, except rarely?

In any case, this is not an apologetic preface for translating the article; it is delightful and deserves to be read, and deserves that we pause before it in no hurried pause.

The real troubles of women lie in their being compelled to carry out all manner of experiments to adapt themselves to men's theories of them. The woman of natural appearance is no more than one who has succeeded in being what a man wanted her to be; and if hysteria mounts her, that is only because she does not know what she ought to be — which patterns to follow, which feminine design, drawn for her by a man, she is to fill in.

For just as the world is full of men, it is naturally full of men's theories about how women ought to be.

Men strive toward the type, and it is the type, not the individual, that determines the model theory of woman.

The grasping Romans laid down the theory of the woman as "mistress of the house," which

suited to perfection their appetite for possession. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion; so she had to be above it, regardless of how far Caesar sank beneath it...

After them, (many) men devised the theory of "the harlot woman," and so it was that women flung themselves upon the pattern.

Then Dante appeared with his "pure and chaste" Beatrice, and her ideal held sway across the centuries. The age of the Renaissance came with the theory of the "cultured, learned" woman, and the gentle hum of belles-lettres ran through poetry and prose.

Dickens invented the character of the "child-wife," and hosts of child-wives appeared. Dickens also had a hand in creating another virtuous Beatrice — but one fit for marriage!.. namely Agnes. And George Eliot imitated his pattern and made it fast.

Then appeared the patterns of the "noble woman," the "pure consort," the "self-sacrificing mother" — and it lived on the stage until its death.

Our poor mothers were of this type; and so we men, who feared our mothers, were swept by a reaction toward the child-wife. And we were not inventive, so our conditions for her went no further than that she should have a boyish appearance.. Yes, that is the direction: young men fear the personality of the real woman. There are, of course, other theories and patterns; capable men draw up the designs of the patterns of capable women — doctors plan out nurses, businessmen plan out secretaries, and so on through the rest of the professions.

And you could, if you wished, arrive at the