Topics covered by the book included "Woman's Equipment," "Compulsory Marriage," "The Emancipated Housewife," and "Women as Martyrs."
Women were gaining rights, according to Mencken—the ability to partake in adultery without lasting public disgrace, the ability to divorce men, and even some escape from the notion of virginity as sacred, which remained as "one of the hollow conventions of Christianity."
Although Mencken did not intend to demean women, his description of his "ideal scene" with a woman in the 1922 edition was not conventionally progressive: It is the close of a busy and vexatious day—say half past five or six o'clock of a winter afternoon.
Nothing challenging and vexatious—but remember, she is intelligent; what she says is clearly expressed... Gradually I fall asleep—but only for an instant... then to sleep again—slowly and charmingly down that slippery hill of dreams.
I ask you seriously: could anything be more unutterably beautiful?Mencken often espoused views of politics, religion, and metaphysics that stressed their grotesqueness and absurdity; in this context, escape from the supposed fraud of such somber subjects was welcome to him.