There are phrases which charm like a song, and one of these phrases is:
"The Woman of the Future."
This sings for me in the verse of a poet and a seer, whose name now
shines with the radiance of the morning star, although during his
lifetime it was sullied with defamation as that of an atheist and
destroyer of society--because the luminous path of his thoughts appeared
to the prejudices of his contemporaries as a blinding flash of
lightning. His poet's vision revealed to him a new time in which women
would be
"... frank, beautiful and kind
As the free heaven, which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,
And changed to all which once they dared not be
Yet being now, made earth like heaven."
This beautiful profile of the woman of the future, which Shelley has
traced, floats before me when I attempt here to draw her portrait in
more precise outlines.
* * * * *
The storm and stress period of woman and the new social and
psychological formations thereby entailed must, indeed, extend far into
the twentieth century. This period of conflict will cease only when
woman within and out of marriage shall have received legal equality with
man. It will cease when such a transformation of society shall have come
to pass that the present rivalry between the sexes shall be ended in a
manner advantageous to both and when finally the work of earning a
livelihood as well as care of the household shall have received such
form that it will weigh less heavily than now upon the woman.
Toward the end of the twentieth century only could the type of the
nineteenth century woman have reached its culmination and a new type of
woman begin to appear.
My ideal picture of the woman of the future, and when one paints an
ideal one does not need to limit one's imagination, is that she will be
a being of profound contrasts which have attained harmony. She will
appear as a great multiplicity and a complete unity; a rich plenitude
and a perfect simplicity; a thoroughly educated creature of culture and
an original spontaneous nature; a strongly marked human individuality
and a complete manifestation of most profound womanliness. This woman
will understand the spirit of a scientific work, of an exact search
after truth, of free, independent thought, of artistic creation. She
will comprehend the necessity of the laws of nature and of the progress
of evolution; she will possess the feeling of solidarity and regard for
the interests of society. Because she will know more and think more
clearly than the woman of the present, she will be more just; because
she will be stronger, she will be better; because she will be wiser, she
will be also more gentle. She will be able to see things in the ensemble
and in their connection with each other; she will lose thereby certain
prejudices which are still called virtues. Nevertheless she will remain
the one who forms customs. But she will not seek her support in social
convention; she will find it in the laws of her own being. She will have
the courage to think her own thoughts and to investigate the new
thoughts of her time. She will dare to experience and to acknowledge
feelings which she now suppresses or conceals. Her full liberty of
action and the complete development of her personality will render
possible intrepid efforts for life, an energetic striving after an
existence which shall conform to her own ego. And such an existence she
will be able also to find with surer instinct than now. She will
understand how to work with more intensity, to rest with more intensity
and with more intensity to delight in all immediate, simple sources of
joy than the woman of the present is able to do. Thus in the new woman
the feeling of life will be enhanced, her experience will be more
profound; her soul life, her demands for beauty, her senses will be more
developed and refined. She will be more sensitive, more delicately
vibratory; she will therefore be able to be more profoundly happy and
also to suffer more keenly than the woman of our time.
Thus the woman of the twentieth century will give new value to the life
of society and to art, to science and to literature. But her greatest
cultural significance remains, however, by means of the enigmatic, the
instinctive, the intuitive and the impulsive in her own being to protect
mankind from the dangers of excessive culture. In face of knowledge she
will maintain the rights of the unknowable; in face of logic, feeling;
in face of reality, possibilities; and in face of analysis, intuition.
Woman will above all further the growth of the soul, man that of the
intelligence; she will extend the sphere of intuition, he that of
reason; she will realize tenderness, he justice; she will triumph by
audacity, he by courage.
The woman of the future will not only have learned much, she will also
have forgotten much--especially the feminine as well as anti-feminine
follies of the present time.
With her whole being she will desire the happiness of love. She will be
chaste, not because she is cold, but because she is passionate. She will
be reserved, not because she is bloodless but because she is full
blooded. She will be soulful and therefore she will be sensuous; she
will be proud and therefore she will be true. She will demand a great
love, because she herself can give a still greater. The erotic problem,
because of her refined idealism, will be extremely complicated and often
almost insoluble. Therefore the happiness which she will give and
experience will be richer, more profound and enduring than anything
which up to the present time has been called happiness. Many traits
which belong to the wife and mother of today will probably be lacking in
the woman of the future. She will remain always the beloved, the
sweetheart, and only so will she become a mother. She will devote her
finest and strongest forces to the difficult and beautiful art of being
at the same time the beloved and the mother; her religious cult will be
to create the supreme happiness of life. Because she will know and value
the psychical and physical conditions of health and beauty she will
choose the father of her children with clearer vision and deeper feeling
of responsibility than at present; she will bear and rear sound and
beautiful beings and she herself will possess greater attraction and
longer youth than the woman of the present. She will charm all her life,
because she will always beautify existence. But she will please only
because, at every age, she will be wholly herself; and her imperishable
youth, her most perfect beauty, she will reveal solely to him whom she
loves. She will know that the charm of the soul is the most profound;
and out of the plenitude of her being she will create the eternal
renewal of this charm, always unexpected and in infinitely nuanced
expressions of her personal grace. By her mere presence she will remove
the constraint of form and custom and will create varying expressions,
elevated by her own nobility, for the family life, the public life and
for society. She will probably speak less than the woman of the present
time, but her silence and her smile will be more eloquent. She will give
herself always directly and always with moderation, different and always
constant, spontaneous and always exquisite. Her being will pour forth,
brimming free and fresh, like the surge of the mountain torrent, but
like this, dominated by a certain inner rhythm. However far she allows
herself to go--in ecstasy of joy, in passion of tenderness, in delirium
of happiness or in the frenzy of grief--yet she will never lose herself.
She will be a multiplicity of women and yet always one, whether she
plays and smiles or suffers and smiles; whether she beams with health or
bleeds with mortal wounds; whether she be imbued with and radiate
repose or nervous intensity, joy or tears, sun or night, coolness or
ardor.
The woman of the future exists already in man's dreams of women, and
woman fashions herself according to the dreams of man. The modern man's
ideal of woman is not the masculine woman, but the revelation of the
"eternal feminine" developed in all directions. This new type of woman
has already gleamed forth here and there, not only in our time but in
centuries passed. In the Middle Ages she wrote the letters of Heloise;
in the Renaissance, Leonardo painted her as Mona Lisa; and in the
eighteenth century she held the salon of Mlle. Lespinasse. In our
century she wrote the love sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; she
appeared upon the stage as Eleonora Duse--and as in a precious stone her
being is crystallized by the poet's words with which Rahel's personality
was epitomized: "calm yet emotionally vivid."[B]
[B] Footnote from French translation:--The reference here is to
Rahel de Varnhagen. The citation is taken from the "Hyperion"
of Holderlin, a German poet of whom mention is made apropos
of Nietzsche, upon whom he had great influence.