Circular rank is envied and imitated by the wife of a common 
Equilateral, who can achieve nothing beyond a mere monotonous swing, 
like the ticking of a pendulum; and the regular tick of the 
Equilateral is no less advmired and copied by the wife of the 
progressive and aspiring Isosceles, in the females of whose famil no 
"back-motion" of any kind has become as yet a necessity of life.  
Hence, in every family of position and consideration, "back motion" is 
as prevalent as time itself; and the husbands and sons in these 
households enjoy immunity at least from invisible attacks. 

    Not that it must be for a moment supposed that our Women are 
destitute of affection.  But unfortunately the passion of the moment 
predominates, in the Frail Sex, over every other consideration.  This 
is, of course, a necessity arising from their unfortunate 
conformation.  For as they have no pretensions to an angle, being 
inferior in this respect to the very lowest of the Isosceles, they are 
consequently wholly devoid of brainpower, and have neither reflection, 
judgment nor forethought, and hardly any memory.  Hence, in their fits 
of fury, they remember no claims and recognize no distinctions.  I 
have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole 
household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the 
fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and 
children. 

    Obviously then a Woman is not to be irritated as long as she is in 
a position where she can turn round.  When you have them in their 
apartments -- which are constructed with a view to denying them that 
power -- you can say and do what you like; for they are then wholly 
impotent for mischief, and will not remember a few minutes hence the 
incident for which they may be at this moment threatening you with 
death, nor the promises which you may have found it necessary to make 
in order to pacify their fury. 

    On the whole we got on pretty smoothly in our domestic relations, 
except in the lower strata of the Military Classes.  There the want of 
tact and discretion on the part of the husbands produces at times 
indescribable disasters.  Relying too much on the offensive weapons of 
their acute angles instead of the defensive organs of good sense and 
seasonable simulations, these reckless creatures too often neglect the 
prescribed construction of the women's apartments, or irritate their 
wives by ill-advised expressions out of doors, which they refuse 
immediately to retract.  Moreover a blunt and stolid regard for 
literal truth indisposes them to make those lavish promises by which 
the more judicious Circle can in a moment pacify his consort.  The 
result is massacre; not, however, without its advantages, as it 
eliminates the more brutal and troublesome of the Isosceles; and by 
many of our Circles the destructiveness of the Thinner Sex is regarded 
as one among many providential arrangements for suppressing redundant 
population, and nipping Revolution in the bud. 

    Yet even in our best regulated and most approximately Circular 
families I cannot say that the ideal of family life is so high as with 
you in Spaceland.  There is peace, in so far as the absence of 
slaughter may be called by that name, but there is necessarily little 
harmony of tastes or pursuits; and the cautious wisdom of the FCircles 
has ensured safety at the cost of domestic comfort.  In every Circular 
or Polygonal household it has been a habit from time immemorial -- and 
now has become a kind of instinct among the women of our higher 
classes -- that the mothers and daughters should constantly keep their 
eyes and mouths towards their husband and his male friends; and for a 
lady in a family of distinction to turn her back upon her husband 
would be regarded as a kind of portent, involving loss of _status._  
But, as I shall soon shew, this custom, though it has the advantage of 
safety, is not without disadvantages. 

    In the house of the Working Man or respectable Tradesman -- where 
the wife is allowed to turn her back upon her husband, while pursuing 
her household avocations -- there are at least intervals of quiet, 
when the wife is neither seen nor heard, except for the humming sound 
of the continuous Peace-cry; but in the homes of the upper classes 
there is too often no peace.  There the voluble mouth and bright 
penetrating eye are ever directed toward the Master of the household; 
and light itself is not more persistent than the stream of Feminine 
discourse.  The tact and skill which suffice to avert a Woman's sting 
are unequal to the task of stopping a Woman's mouth; and as the wife 
has absolutely nothing to say, and absolutely no constraint of wit, 
sense, or conscience to prevent her from saying it, not a few cynics 
have been found to aver that they prefer the danger of the death-
dealing but inaudible sting to the safe sonorousness of a Woman's 
other end. 

    To my readers in Spaceland the condition of our Women may seen 
truly deplorable, and so indeed it is.  A Male of the lowest type of 
the Isosceles may look forward to some improvement of his angle, and 
to the ultimate elevation of the whole of his degraded caste; but no 
Woman can entertain such opes for her sex.  "Once a Woman, always a 
Woman" is a Decree of Nature; and the very Laws of Evolution seem 
suspended in her disfavour.  Yet at least we can admire the wise 
Prearrangement which has ordained that, as they have no hopes, so they 
shall have no memory to recall, and no forethought to anticipate, the 
miseries and humiliations which are at once a necessity of their 
existence and the basis of the constitution of Flatland. 

                                 * * *

        SECTION 5. -- Of our Methods of Recognizing one another 

    You, who are blessed with shade as well as light, you, who are 
gifted with two eyes, endowed with a knowledge of perspective, and 
charmed with the enjoyment of various colours, you, who can actually