_Mantegazza_ lays stress on the fact that in the female, sexual desire is very rarely accompanied by pains analogous to those which occur in man, in whom sexual excitement manifests itself in painful tension of the testicle and the seminal vesicles, or in spasmodic, long-continued priapism.
_Sergi_ writes to _Lombroso_: “The normal woman loves to be flattered and wooed by man, but yields herself to his sexual desires only like an animal at the sacrifice. It is well known how much pains must be taken, how many caresses must be expended, before a woman will yield with pleasure to a man’s desires, and will share his sexual passion. Without the employment of these means, a woman remains cold and gives as little satisfaction as she feels. There are girls who are quite obtuse to the joys of love, and either resist energetically a man’s approaches, or yield to him passively, without ardor and without enthusiasm. It is well known, also, that among the lower races of mankind, means are employed to stimulate the sexual sensibility in women, means that seem to us to amount to torture; and that the male, with the same end in view, undergoes the most painful operations, from which it is apparent that the slight sexual sensibility of women in these lower grades of civilization is fully recognized.” And again: “If a normal woman marries for love, she hides that love deep in her heart, and even on the wedding-day exhibits no great sexual excitement; she often complains later that in her husband the love-fervor of the first days still continues; the very moderate sexual needs of the wife form a natural and most valuable check to the much more powerful passion of the male.”
_Saint Prospêre_ expresses himself to a similar effect: “Women do not fall in consequence of the excessive power of the senses—in this domain they are overlords, in striking contrast to men, whose weakest side is here. It is not by means of the senses that a woman is to be overcome; her weakness lies elsewhere—in her heart, in her vanity.” And _de Lambert_ wrote the epigram, “Women play with love, and yield themselves to love, but they do not abandon themselves to love.”
Well known also is the saying of _Dante_:
“We know how speedily in women the fire of love is consumed Unless eye and hand continually supply it with fresh fuel.”