Beginning with the curt words, "this is a book of tears and anger," Schirmacher details the many ways in which women have had to adjust - as sexual objects, as workers, as single women, as girls, as prostitutes, and in many other ways. She then lists a number of axioms from the breviary of women, sayings that she hopes will be heeded, and she concludes with the solution to the riddle: woman, namely independence of both sexes.