cuse to keep women in their place in the second set of conditions, those involving the evolution of social customs and laws. These follow the direction of mere physical forces and add heavily to them, says Gilman, which means that the biological nature of women becomes their defining element so that social customs grow up around them and then themselves are treated as if they were biological laws, as if women were relegated only to the roles of wife and mother and otherwise were to be separated from much of society. Gilman next points to what she says is the unbroken accumulating of precedent or the burden placed on women by developing civilization, meaning that the different elements created by custom become permanent conditions and are seen as natural, biological, imperatives. Gilman says these are "burnt into each generation by the gro
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