The martyr sacrifices herself (himself in a few instances) entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for she (or he) makes the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

The midnight hours were her time to be selfish and vain

Self-sacrifice is the leit-motif of most of the marital
games played by women, from the crudest (‘I’ve given you the
best years of my life’) to the most sophisticated (‘I only went to bed
with him so’s he’d promote you’). For so much sacrificed self the
expected reward is security, and seeing that a reward is expected it
cannot properly speaking be called self-sacrifice at all. It is in fact a
kind of commerce, and onein which the female must always be the creditor. Of course, it is also
practised by men who explain their failure to do exciting jobs or risk
insecurity because of their obligations to wife and/or children, but
it is not invariable, whereas it is hard to think of a male/female relationship
in which the element of female self-sacrifice was absent. So
long as women must live vicariously, through men, they must labour
at making themselves indispensable and this is the full-time job that
is generally wrongly called altruism. Properly speaking, altruism is
an absurdity. Women are self-sacrificing in direct proportion to their
incapacity to offer anything but this sacrifice. They sacrifice what
they never had: a self.

You are martyred, as woman is ever martyred, particularly if she seeks her own power.

Doomed to procreation and secondary tasks, stripped of her practical importance and her mystical prestige, woman becomes no more than a servant.

It's so graceless, being a martyr. It's honoring your adversaries too much.

Properly speaking, altruism is an absurdity. Women are self-sacrificing in direct proportion to their incapacity to offer anything but this sacrifice. They sacrifice what they never had: a self. The cry of the deserted woman, 'What have I done to deserve this?' reveals at once the false emotional economy that she has been following.

She's vain about her hair.

I only appear selfish to a saint.

[N]othing has as yet been of any value, however good its intent. There is no virtue, or reputed virtue, which has not been rigidly pursued, and things have remained as before. Men and women have practised self-denial, and to what end? They have compelled themselves to suffer hunger and thirst; in vain. They have clothed themselves in sackcloth and lacerated the flesh. They have mutilated themselves. Some have been scrupulous to bathe, and some have been scrupulous to cake their bodies with the foulness of years. Many have devoted their lives to assist others in sickness or poverty. Chastity has been faithfully observed, chastity both of body and mind. Self-examination has been pursued till it ended in a species of sacred insanity, and all these have been of no more value than the tortures undergone by the Indian mendicant who hangs himself up by a hook through his back. All these are pure folly.

She felt that her marriage vows were desecrated, her dignity insulted; but she had no compassion for the poor victim of her husband’s perfidy. She pitied herself as a martyr; but she was incapable of feeling for the condition of shame and misery in which her unfortunate, helpless slave was placed.

When does loyalty become martyrdom?

She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.

She had never acquired in-between shades of character, had not had the opportunity. She had been utterly selfish, and was now selfless, because she had never become a whole person, did not like herself, or know herself. Nor had she ever gained sufficient wisdom to be properly horrified at what she meant to do. She couldn’t think that intensely.