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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: Mentor, a male form; but her speech and thought is essentially
masculine, and not feminine. Antiope is a mere lay-figure,
introduced at the end of the book because Telemachus must needs be
allowed to have hope of marrying someone or other. Venus plays but
the same part as she does in the Tannenhauser legends of the Middle
Age. Her hatred against Telemachus is an integral element of the
plot. She, with the other women or nymphs of the romance, in spite
of all Fenelon's mercy and courtesy towards human frailties, really
rise no higher than the witches of the Malleus Maleficanum. Woman--
as the old monk held who derived femina from fe, faith, and minus,
less, because women have less faith than men--is, in "Telemaque,"
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