Every discussion of the status of woman is complicated by the existence of the lady. She overshadows the rest of her sex.

Until changing economic conditions made the thing actually happen, struggling early society would hardly have guessed that woman's road to gentility would lie through doing nothing at all.

The lady is proverbial for her skill in eluding definition ... she may be described merely as the female of the favored social class.

Maternity is on the face of it an unsociable experience. The selfishness that a woman has learned to stifle or to dissemble where she alone is concerned, blooms freely and unashamed on behalf of her offspring.

The lady ... is not a producer; in most communities productive labor is by consent unladylike. On the other hand she is the heaviest of consumers, and theorists have not been wanting to maintain that the more she spends the better off society is.

Every discussion of the status of woman is complicated by the existence of the lady. She overshadows the rest of her sex.

the true lady is in theory either a virgin or a lawful wife.