Knowing this Armenian made me realise how restricted my own learning
was, and what a very general field of knowledge I had chosen.
I wrote my newspaper articles and my essays, and I worked at my
doctor's thesis on French Aesthetics, which cost me no little pains; it
was my first attempt to construct a consecutive book, and it was only
by a vigorous effort that I completed it at the end of 1869. But I had
then been casting over in my mind for some years thoughts to which I
never was able to give a final form, thoughts about the position of
women in society, which would not let me rest.
A woman whose thought fired mine even further just about this time, a
large-minded woman, who studied society with an uncompromising
directness that was scarcely to be met with in any man of the time in
Denmark, was the wife of the poet Carsten Hauch. When she spoke of
Danish women, the stage of their development and their position in law,
their apathy and the contemptibleness of the men, whether these latter
were despots, pedants, or self-sufficient Christians, she made me a
sharer of her point of view; our hearts glowed with the same flame.
Rinna Hauch was not, like certain old ladies of her circle, a "woman's
movement" woman before the name was invented. She taught no doctrine,
but she glowed with ardour for the cause of freedom and justice. She
saw through the weak, petty men and women of her acquaintance and
despised them. She too passionately desired a thorough revolution in
modern society to be able to feel satisfied merely by an amelioration
of the circumstances of women of the middle classes; and yet it was the
condition of women, especially in the classes she knew well, that she
thought most about.
She began to place some credence in me and cherished a hope that I
should do my utmost to stir up the stagnation at home, and during the
long conversations we had together, when, in the course of these
Summers, I now and again spent a week at a time with the Hauchs at
Hellebaek, she enflamed me with her ardour.
In September, 1868, after wandering with my old friend up and down the
shore, under the pure, starlit heaven, and at last finding myself late
at night in my room, I was unable to go to rest. All that had been
talked of and discussed in the course of the day made my head hot and
urged me to reflection and action. Often I seized a piece of paper and
scribbled off, disconnectedly, in pencil, remarks corresponding to the
internal agitation of my mind, jottings like the following, for example:
S.R., that restive fanatic, has a wife who cannot believe, and wishes
for nothing but to be left in peace on religious matters. He _forces
her_ to go to Communion, though he knows the words of Scripture, that
he who partakes unworthily eats and drinks to his own damnation.
There is not one sound, healthy sentiment in the whole of our religious
state of being. You frequently hear it said: "Everyone can't be a
hypocrite." True enough. But begin, in the middle classes, to deduct
hypocrisy, and gross affectation and cowardly dread of Hell, and see
what is left!
If we have young people worthy the name, I will tell them the truth; but
this band of backboneless creatures blocks up the view.
Women whom Life has enlightened and whom it has disappointed! You I can
help.
I see two lovers hand in hand, kissing the tears away from each other's
eyes.
I can only rouse the wakeful. Nothing can be done with those who are
incapable of feeling noble indignation.