Patchwork Girl


Women's nature

When Freud described the weaker moral character of woman he was quoting and justifying an ages old belief. It was woman in the form of Eve who instituted man's first downfall (or so generations believed). Man must be good since he is made in God's image.  
  An age old fear, for men, was the idea of women's sexual voracity. To defend against this they preferred to think of women as 'the weaker sex', who needed to be kept in check by fathers, brothers and husbands.
'I will allow that bodily strength seems to give man a natural superiority over woman; and this is the only solid basis on which the superiority of the sex can be built. . . women ought to endeavor to acquire human virtues (or perfections)by the same means as men … (4)
  
  Women must be convinced of their physical weakness and resultant dependence upon men to protect them from their own moral weakness.
Wollstonecraft describes Rousseau's attitude to women.  
Rousseau describes the role of the sexes. 'Women and man were made for each other, but their mutual dependence is not the same. The men depend on the women only on account of their desires; the women on the men both on account of their desires and their necessities. We could subsist better without them than they without us.' (4)
'He then proceeds to prove that woman ought to be weak and passive, because she has less bodily strength than man; and hence infers that she was formed to please and to be subject to him, and that it is her duty to render herself agreeable to her master - this being the grand end of her existence.' (4)  
  The Patchwork Girl does not owe any allegiance to men. She is not weak, nor is she prepared to be foolish. She does not have a need to be protected by a man so she is not indebted to a man.