The Slanderers by Warwick Deeping

OPHELIA STRONG had discovered her escape from domesticities a relief after the irritations and petulances of the last few months. Married life had proved nothing to her save the inconsiderate bigotry of her husband and the selfishness of men who refuse to reconsider habits formed in bachelor days. Ophelia believed herself to be a most misunderstood and ill-used person, a woman sacrificed to the over-fervid rashness of her own heart. Her love, a very shallow stream dependent largely on the rainfall of flattery, could easily be turned into other channels. A devotee of sensations, vain and convictionless, it was the most natural problem for her to consider how best she could frame life afresh in order to produce the most palatable and abundant satisfactions to press into the cup of pleasure.

Had Ophelia Strong been possessed of the literary knack, the world would probably have received from her sundry erotic and hysterical effusions upon the supreme brutality of man. Ophelia was a feminine realist in the flesh, but she was unable to record her experiences on paper. Possessed of a grievance, the modern Sappho scrolls out her often sordid wisdom and barters her emotions for the dubious edification of the members of circulating libraries. It is necessary in these days for the feminine realist to display a vivid familiarity with physiological data. The morbid anatomy of her own physical being is placed on record with a sincerity worthy of an encyclopedist. Elaborately stained sections are often remarkably beautiful under the microscope. Even diseased tissues tinctured azure and red resemble fine arabesque on rich mosaics. Reflect on the suggestiveness of morbid changes, however, and you will perhaps feel that there is something unpleasant in watching a woman preparing specimens to prove how the bacteria of sin affected her moral tissues.