Confidence arises from a sense of personal value.
The more you believe this half-heard voice, the shakier your confidence will be. A woman trying to change her unequal status is caught in the crossfire between the doubting voices outside her and their echo, the doubting voice inside her. She is like a country mustering strength to fight off a powerful invader - while disastrously weakened internally by civil war. An extreme result of this way of thinking is the practice of suttee , where a wife must burn to death on her husband's funeral pyre. If the entire purpose of your life has been to serve your husband, it makes an appalling sort of sense to believe that, when he dies, there is no further justification for your existence.