This type of woman, neurotic from her very birth, is often the very best product of our civilization from the standpoint of character and ability, just as the male neurasthenic is often the backbone of progress and advancement.  But we are concerned with these questions:  “What happens to her in marriage?” “How about her fitness for marriage?”

As to the first question, we may say that all depends on whom and how she marries.  For after all a woman does not marry matrimony, she marries a man, a home, and generally children.  And if the neurotic woman marries a devoted, kindly, conscientious man with wealth enough to give her servants in the household and variety in her experiences, she is as reasonably well off as could be expected.  She is no worse off than if she had remained single and continued to be a school teacher, social worker, typist, factory hand the rest of her days,—­and she has fulfilled more of her desires and functions.  But if she marries an unsympathetic, impatient man or a poor one, or a combination, then the first child brings a breakdown that persists, with now and then short periods of betterment, for many years.  Then we have the chronic invalid, the despair of a household, the puzzle of the doctors.  “Not really sick,” say the latter to the discouraged husband, seeking to adjust himself to his wife, “only neurasthenic.  All the organs are O.K.”  To differentiate between a lowered energy and imaginary illness or laziness is a hard task to which this husband is usually unequal.  Though some show of duty and kindness remains, love dies in such a household.  And the very effort to give sympathy where doubt exists as to the genuineness of the affliction is painful and increases the chasm between wife and husband.

That some of the sweetest marriages result where the wife is of this type does not change the general situation that such a marriage is an increased risk.  Should a man knowingly marry such a woman?  The question is futile in the overwhelming majority of cases.  He will marry her, is the answer.  For the fascinating woman is frequently of this type.  Witness the charm of the neuropathic eye with its widely dilated pupil that changes with each emotion, the mobile face,—­delicate, with a play of color, red and white, that is charming to look at, but which the grim physician calls “Vasomotor instability.”  There is nothing neutral about this type; she is either very lovely or a freak.

So all advice in the matter is of little avail.  And racially speaking it is good that it is of no avail.  I believe firmly that such a woman is more often the mother of high ability than her more placid sister; that something of the delicacy of feeling and intensity of reaction of neurasthenia is a condition of genius.  We are too far away from any real knowledge of heredity to advise for or against marriage in the most of cases on this basis, and certainly we must not repeat Lombroso and Nordau’s errors and call all variations from stupidity degeneration.