She makes his coffee

Why does she do it? Not for love always, not for desperation always, not for masochistic pleasure certainly, then why? To me, it's the most cruel sight on earth - the flower herself bearing the brunt of routine, chore, drudgery, drill, and contempt.

It's a woman's nature, too often, to bear slights from her man, to worship her man as the highest ideal on this earth even though he might be a drunkard and wifebeater, to run through his bruises and her life with a sigh and not with a complaint (complaint to whom?), to love only once and romanticise everything connected to that man even if he be a blackguard; yet, modern education, exposure to pleasures which only men used to anticipate, greater independent upbringing, a diversity of ideals and idols to follow, and increasing ways of access to that attribute, power, which a woman is so fond of - all that is changing the very nature of a woman. But, is the nature getting only subverted to a certain degree, retaining yet the same elements?

Throughout my life, I have been amazed by the strength required of a woman to perform some of the roles expected of her - wife, mother, prostitute. Even to elope with someone just on his word, or to jilt one for another - so much mental calculations in most cases, or a wanton abandonment to one's instincts in others. Yet, such a mental strength! When you don't care for the world, for anybody's word except what you think is right. There's no room for anyone else in that photoframe. Either the woman is in that frame, or the glass lies shattered. The strength of sacrifice, even! And, herein lies sometimes my thread of thought - though the sight of sacrifice by a woman is somehow very difficult to bear, is that strength itself ebbing away now from women? Is only the physical now the difference between a man and a woman?