Title: ‘Vanity (Frailty), Thy Name Is Woman’ - How Women Look For Power In All The Wrong Places|Uncle Guido's Facts
Headings: ‘Vanity (Frailty), Thy Name Is Woman’ - How Women Look For Power In All The Wrong Places
Sunday, July 5, 2015
‘Vanity (Frailty), Thy Name Is Woman’ - How Women Look For Power In All The Wrong Places

Content: The more plausible explanation is a psycho-social one. Men have always mistrusted women with good reason. For courtier and commoner alike paternity in Elizabethan times was serious business. Kings were concerned about lineage, heritage, and succession; and peasants refused to work hard hours for offspring that weren’t theirs. Vanity – the display of feminine allure – was logically associated with infidelity, breach of trust, and cuckoldry. ‘ Frail’ women were sure to be ‘vain’ to attract and seduce sexual interlopers. Strindberg understood women’s absolute power over men. In The Father Laura preys on her husband’s uncertainty about the paternity of their daughter and literally drives him insane enough to be committed to a mental institution, thus freeing her under Swedish law, to be the sole guardian of their daughter. www.artgallery.nsw.au.gov
Why, then, so much fuss and bother about the role of women in American society?