The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head.

A man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else.
Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism.

Thackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis' mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man.

She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value.

The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic.