"The man is generally described as cold in love. References to a knight's desire for a woman's love are very scant, and only once do we come across a hero who is quite in love. The young knight prefers more serious matters; his first desire is to win fame in battle, make rich booty.[21] He looks on love as superfluous, indeed he is convinced that it incapacitates him from what he regards as his proper life-task. He also fears the woman's infidelity. If he allows her to persuade him to love, he seeks material gain from it; delivery from captivity, property, vassals.... The lover is often tardy, careless, too deficient in tenderness, so that the woman has to chide him and invite his caresses. A rendezvous is always brought about only through her efforts, and she alone is annoyed if it is disturbed too soon. Even when the man desires a woman, he hardly appears as a wooer. He knows he is sure of the women's favor; they make it easy for him; he can have any number of them if he belongs to a noble family.... Even when the knight is in love--which is very rare--the first advances are nearly always made by the woman; it is she who proposes marriage.
"Marriage as treated in the epics is seldom based on love. The woman desires wedlock, because she hopes thereby to secure her rights and better her chances of protection. It is for this reason that we see her so often eagerly endeavoring to secure a promise of marriage."
Sufficient evidence has now been adduced to make it clear that the first of the two questions posed at the outset of this chapter must be answered in the negative. Coyness is _not_ an innate or universal trait of femininity, but is often absent, particularly where man's absorption in war and woman's need of protection prevent its growth and induce the females to do the courting. This being the case and war being the normal state of the lower races, our next task is to ascertain what were the influences that induced woman to adopt the habit of repelling advances instead of making them. It is one of the most interesting questions in sexual psychology, which has never been answered satisfactorily; it and gains additional interest from the fact that we find among the most ancient and primitive races phenomena which resemble coyness and have been habitually designated as such. As we shall see in a moment, this is an abuse of language, confounding genuine resistance or aversion with coyness.