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To a keen European eye there is an indefinable yet undeniable something in the whole makeup of the born American that distinguishes him from the born European. [This is very true today.]
There is no country in the world where women have to work so hard to attract men’s attention. [Women have told me that this is still true.]
I made many observations on shipboard. I noticed that whenever the American husband spoke to his wife there was always a little melancholy note in his voice, as though he were not quite free; as though he were a boy talking to an older woman. He was always very polite and very kind, and paid her every respect. You could see that in her eyes he was not at all dangerous, and that she was not afraid of being mastered by him. But when any one told him that there was betting going on he would leave her, and his face became eager and full of desire, and his eyes would get very bright and his voice would get strong, and hard, and brutal. That is why I say his Libido, his vital energy, is in the game. He loves to gamble. That is business to-day.
It takes much vital energy to be in love. In America you give so many opportunities both to your men and women that they do not save any of their vital force for loving. This is a wonderful country for opportunity. It is everywhere. It spreads out. It runs all over the surface of everything. And so the American mind runs out and spreads over the whole country. But there is a dark side of this. The people of America do not have to dig deep for their own life. In Europe we do.
It may be that you are going to produce a race which are human beings first, and men and women secondarily. It may be that you are going to create the real independent woman who knows she is independent, who feels the responsibility of her independence and, in time, will come to see that she must give spontaneously those things which up to now she only allows to be taken from her when she pretends to be passive. Today the American woman is still confused. She wants independence, she wants to be free to do everything, to have all the opportunities which men have, and, at the same time she wants to be mastered by man and to be possessed in the archaic way of Europe.
You think your young girls marry European husbands because they are ambitious for titles. I say it is because, after all, they are not different from the European girls; they like the way European men make love, and they like to feel we are a little dangerous. They are not happy with their American husbands because they are not afraid of them. It is natural, even though it is archaic, for women to want to be afraid when they love. If they don’t want to be afraid then perhaps they are becoming truly independent, and you may be producing the real ‘new woman.’ But up to this time your American man isn’t ready for real independence in woman. He only wants to be the obedient son of his mother-wife.
