Second-fiddle females

She is puzzling and contains contradictory elements. She is wise, but not formidably so. She is eternally young and like a phoenix rises out of her own ashes utterly renewed. The novel, She by H. Rider Haggard, exemplified this female archetype in the setting of ancient Egypt. Sherlock Holmes scholars recognize her in the opera star, Irene Adler, heroine of A Scandal in Bohemia. Holmes, however, also had this to say about the fair sex, "The motives of women are so inscrutable.... How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes or their most extraordinary conduct may depend on a hairpin or a curling tong."

No wonder women still are trying to break through the glass ceiling, not only in business, but in world culture.

Gerald F. Kreyche, American Thought Editor of USA Today, is professor emeritus of philosophy, DePaul University, Chicago.

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