It is because women are mystified that useless and charming qualities such as their modesty, pride, and extreme delicacy flourish; in one sense, these are defects: they lead to lies, susceptibilities, and anger, but they can be explained by the situation in which women are placed; it leads them to take pride in little things or at least in 'things determined by feeling' because all the 'supposedly important' objects are out of their reach; their modesty results from the dependence they suffer: because it is forbidden to them to show their worth in action