The women were apparently serious, too, and where they were associated with the men were, if they were not really subject, strictly abeyant, in the spectator's eye.
"Short Stories and Essays From "Literature and Life""
William Dean Howells
Mrs. Horn did not intend that they should ever go so far as to make her troublesome; and it was with a sense of this abeyant authority of her aunt's that the girl asked her approval of her proposed call upon the Dryfooses.
"A Hazard of New Fortunes"
William Dean Howells
Were the sons of women in whom the potential male had remained abeyant, more virile of body and brain than are the sons of women who have cultivated masculine characteristics, solely and absolutely because the mothers in the latter case had misappropriated to their own uses powers that belonged by right of heredity to sons?
"Feminism and Sex-Extinction"
Arabella Kenealy