"If you marry, girls," she would say, "you must be very careful. Men can be beasts, filthy beasts with nothing but carnal lust on their minds, and a lady, a real lady, never submits to such things. It is your duty, of course, to procreate. That is the burden that God has given to women. But you must never let yourself be touched by animal sensuality or let the man know you enjoy it in any way, or you will burn in the fires of hell as surely as I'm standing before you. I have never married, and I am proud of that fact. I hope you girls will follow my example and take up meaningful social work instead of flinging yourselves into the arms of drooling filthy men."
Although the young wife knew in the back of her mind that Miss Whitfield and the other women were overly frustrated and that their attitude toward sex and men was wrong, those early lectures had had a tremendous effect on her. Night after night in her narrow boarding school bed she had had terrible nightmares about men… men who were intent on raping her, grinning lewdly, leering like degenerate madmen, ripping her clothes from her body! She woke up crying and screaming from such horrible dreams more times than she cared to remember and, as a result, her fears were cemented deep in her unconscious now, so deep that she found, after three months of marriage to Tim, that she might never be able to break through them.