who understood Sonia, and saw that she remained a little girl all her
life,--a woman who never reached her maturity. But, tell me, dear
Father Lie, do you consider love to be worth no more than an orange?
No, these explanations will never satisfy us; they are far too shallow
and simple. The true reason lies deeper; it is more a symptom of the
time in which she lived than those who knew her will allow. Even
so friendly and intelligent an exponent as Ellen Key, her second
biographer, does not seem to be aware of the fact that, although Sonia
is a typical woman of her time,--typical of the more earnest upholders
of women’s rights, and the representative of the highest intellectual
accomplishments to which women have attained,--she is also typical of
that which the woman of this century loses in the struggle, and of that
in which the woman of the future will be the gainer.
If Sonia failed to please,--she whose personal charm was so great,
whose vivacity was so prepossessing, as all who knew her declared that
it was; if she failed where so many lesser women have succeeded, her
failure was entirely due to her ignorance of the art of flirtation,--an
art which is as old as sex, and to which men have been accustomed since
the world began. Even the most refined, the most highly-developed men,
are not geniuses in this matter, where everything has always been most
carefully arranged for them. And if they did not fall in love with
Sonia, it was due to a kind of purity with which she unconsciously
regarded the preliminaries of love,--a kind of nobility which existed
in her more modern nature, and a lack of the ancient instinct which had
been a lost heritage to her.
Sonia belonged to a class of women who have only been produced in
the latter half of our century, but in such large numbers that it
is they who have determined the modern type. We cannot help hoping
that they are but transitory, so greatly do their assumptions seem
opposed to their sex, and yet they are formed of the best material
that the age supplies. They are the women who object to begin life by
fulfilling their destinies as women, and who consider that they have
duties of greater importance than that of becoming wives and mothers;
they are the “clever” daughters of the middle-class families, who,
as governesses and teachers, swarm in every country in Europe. The
popular opinion about them is that they do not want to marry; and as
that, by the majority of men, is interpreted to mean that they are no
good as wives, they turn to the herd of geese who are driven yearly
to the market, and who go cackling to meet their fate. And although
the descendants of such fathers and such mothers present a very small
amount of intelligence capable of development, yet it is they who
form the majority, and the majority is always right. Formerly, it
was people’s sole object to get their daughters married, clever and
stupid alike; it was an understood thing. But nowadays, the ones with
“good heads” are set apart to lead celibate lives, while those who are
“hard of understanding” are brought into the marriage market. This
method of distribution has already become one of the first principles
of middle-class economy. The daughters who are considered capable of
providing for themselves are given a good education, accompanied by
numerous hints as to the large sums which their parents have spent
on them; while, together with the inevitable marriage portion, every
effort is made to find husbands for the others with as little delay as
possible. The first named are “the clever women,” but the latter make
“the best wives;” and man’s sense of justice in the distribution of the
good things of this life has fixed a stern practical barrier between
these two classes.
The intellectual women themselves were originally to blame for
raising a distinction which is so essentially characteristic of our
time. They were the first to separate themselves, and to force the
narrow-minded _bourgeois_ to entertain other than the ordinary ideas
concerning women. They thrust aside the dishes which were spread for
them on life’s table, and grasped at others which had hitherto been
considered the sole property of men, such as smoking and drinking. And
when it appeared that they were really able to pass examinations and
smoke cigarettes, without suffering any apparent harm from either,
the spirit of equality, so popular at the present time, was quick to
recognize a proof of the equality between man and wife, and to proclaim
the equal rights of both, as well as the equality of the brain. They
did not mention the other human ingredient, which could never be either
equal or identical, because it is always inconvenient to go to the root
of a thing, and the arguments of this materialistic century are too
superficial ever to go below the surface.
Can it be true that the talented woman has actually forgotten that
destiny intended her to be a woman, and bound her by eternal laws? Can
it be true that the best women have an unnatural desire to be half men,
and that they would prefer to shirk the duties of motherhood? A woman’s
stupidity would not suffice to account for such an interpretation; it
needs all a man’s thick-headedness; and yet there is no doubt that that
is, to a great extent, the popular view of the case. The women whose
intellectual abilities are above the average are often those who lay
themselves open to the reproach that they have abandoned their sex; and
yet, strange to say, some of them have attained to mature womanhood at
an exceedingly early age. Sonia, who was _par préférence_ the woman
of genius of this century, was only nine years old when she flew into
a passion of jealousy, caused by a little girl who was sitting on the
knees of her handsome young uncle. She bit him in the arm till it
bled, merely because she believed that he liked the child better than
herself; that this was something more than mere childish naughtiness,
is shown by the fact that her feelings towards her uncle were so
changed that from that moment she felt disillusioned, and treated him
with coldness.
Disillusioned! Even in their childhood these women have a strong,
though indistinct, consciousness of their own worth as compared to
ordinary women. They are always on the watch, and they have a good
memory. Unlike ordinary young girls, they do not fall in love with mere
outward qualities, nor with the first man who happens to cross their
path. They wish to marry some one superior to themselves, and they do
not mistake a passing passion for love. Then when the first years of
adolescence with their hot impulses are past, and a temporary calm sets
in, they experience a new desire, which is that they may enter into
the full possession of their own being before beginning to raise a
new generation. Physical maturity, which has hitherto been considered
sufficient, has placed the need for intellectual and psychical maturity
in the shade. They want to be grown-up in mind and soul before entering
on life; they do not wish to remain children always; they want to
develop all their capabilities,--and this longing for individuality,
for which the road has not yet been made clear, nearly always leads
them astray into the wilderness of study.
This is certainly the case when they are urged on, as Sonia Kovalevsky
was, by a remarkable talent. She was not even obliged to follow the
usual weary path of study; richly endowed and favorably situated as she
was, she discovered a more direct way than is possible to the majority
of girl students. Few have been able to begin as she did at the age of
seventeen, under the protection of a devoted husband, and under the
guidance of learned men, who took a personal interest in her welfare.
Few have finished at the age of twenty-four, and have been loaded with
distinctions while in the full bloom of their youth, able to stand on
the threshold of a rich, full life, while fortune bid them take and
choose whatever they might wish.
Yet these were but hollow joys that were offered to her. Those six
years of protracted study left her weak in body and soul, and so
weary that she needed a long period of idle vegetation, and she felt
an aversion from the very studies in which she had accomplished so
much. Sonia had overworked herself in the way that most girls overwork
themselves in their examinations, whether it be for the university or
as teachers; they work on with persistent diligence, looking neither to
the right nor to the left, but going straight ahead as though they were
the victims of hypnotic suggestion, with all their energies paralyzed
except one solitary organ,--the memory. A man never does this; he
interrupts his studies with social recreations and by means of a
system of hygiene, applied alike to body and soul, from which a woman
is excluded, no less on account of her womanly susceptibility than
owing to conventional views. During this period of nervous tension, her
sex is silent; or if it shows itself at all, it does so only in general
irritability.
This was the case with Sonia; but until she became thoroughly engrossed
in her work at Weierstrass’s, Valdemar Kovalevsky had a great deal to
endure. It was not enough for her that she made him run all kinds of
messages, which a servant could have done as well, but she was always
going to see him in his bachelor apartments, and planning little
excursions, and she was never satisfied unless she could have him to
herself. Valdemar did not understand her. He had willingly consented to
become the husband, in name only, of an undeveloped little girl, and be
respected the distorted ideas of the time, which had got firmly fixed
into this same little girl’s head. It is very natural that Sonia should
not have understood the situation; it was not her business to do so, it
was his. But she was always irritable and vexed after a _tête-à-tête_
of any length with him, and long after his death she used scornfully to
say: “He could get on capitally without me. If he had his cigarettes,
his cup of tea, and a book, it was all that he required.”
Valdemar Kovalevsky, the translator of Brehm’s Birds and other
popular scientific works into Russian, appears to have belonged to
that portion of the male sex who are called “paragons.” He drudged
diligently, had few wants, always did what was right, and never gave
in. But he was in no way suited to Sonia, and the fact of his having
agreed to her proposal proves it. After he had gone to Jena to escape
from her wilful squandering of his time, an estrangement took place
between them, and at Berlin she seems to have behaved as though she
were ashamed of him. She was living then, as we have seen, with a girl
friend who was a fellow-student of hers; and although she let Valdemar
fetch her from Weierstrass’s, she introduced him to no one, and did
not let it appear that he was her husband. Afterwards, when she had
finished her studies and undergone a long period of enforced idleness
at the time when her nerves were shaken by her father’s death, she
clung so closely to him that a little warmth came into his stolid
nature. But, naturally enough, neither her affection nor the birth of a
daughter could change his nature, and even during the short time when
they were together at St. Petersburg he allowed an intriguing swindler
to come between them. Repulsed, dissatisfied, and saddened, Sonia went
to Paris.
She wished to stand alone, and the only way in which this was possible
was to turn her studies to account and to work for her own bread.
She had given up the wish to be a learned woman; she wanted to be a
wife, to be loved and made happy; she had done her best, but it had
turned out a failure. It was just about this time that she received an
invitation through Professor Mittag-Leffler to be teacher under him in
the new high school at Stockholm. He was Fru Leffler’s brother, and
a pupil of Weierstrass’s. Sonia gratefully consented, but a fine ear
detects a peculiar undertone in the letters with which she responded.
In Stockholm she did not show the womanly side of her character to
any one, least of all to Professor Mittag-Leffler, with whom she was
on terms of the most cordial friendship. She found herself in very
uncongenial surroundings, in a society where life was conducted on the
strictest utilitarian principles. It was the worst time of her life,
and one from which her impressionable nature never entirely recovered.
Before this, however, while she was in Paris, she had an experience
which was truly characteristic of her.
In the interval which elapsed between her separation from her husband
and his death, she made the acquaintance of a young Pole, who was, as
Fru Leffler tells us, “a revolutionary, a mathematician, a poet, with
a soul aglow with enthusiasm like her own. It was the first time that
she had met any one who really understood her, who shared her varying
moods, and sympathized with all her thoughts and dreams as he did.
They were nearly always together, and the short hours when they were
apart were spent in writing long effusions to each other. They were
wild about the idea that human beings were created in couples, and that
men and women are only half beings until they have found their other
half....” He was with her by night and day, for he could seldom make up
his mind to go before two o’clock in the morning, when he would climb
over the garden wall, quite regardless of what people would think. Fru
Leffler, who had passed the twenty years of her first marriage in the
outer courts of the temple of Hymen, and only learned to know love and
the joys of motherhood at the age of forty, alludes to this incident as
being “very curious.” Because the two did nothing but talk, talk, talk,
revelling in each other’s conversation, and assuring one another that
they “could never be united,” because “he was going to keep himself
pure” for the girl who was wandering about on this or another planet,
and keeping herself for him.
One would imagine that this was childish nonsense, and that a woman of
Sonia’s intelligence, with her position in the world, must surely have
sent the silly boy about his business as soon as he began to talk in
this strain. But no! her soul melted into his “like two flames which
unite in one common glow.” And there they sat, nervous and excited,
unable to tear themselves away from each other, flinging endless chains
of words backwards and forwards across the table, and pouring streams
of witticism into Danaïde’s barrel, talking as though life depended
upon it, for there must not be any pauses,--anything was better than
those dreadful pauses, when one seems to hear nothing but the beating
of one’s own pulse, when shy eyes meet another’s, and cold damp hands
seek for a corner in which to hide themselves.
We do not know what pleasure the “pure” young mathematician, poet,
and Pole could find in this, nor do we care; we leave that to those
who take an interest in the ebullitions of model young men of his
class. The only part of the situation with which we are concerned is
Sonia herself, and she is extremely interesting. In the first place,
such a situation as this is never brought about by the man, or, at
any rate, not more than once; and a woman cannot be entrapped into
it against her will. The silliest schoolgirl knows how to get rid of
a troublesome man when she wishes; they all do it brilliantly. It
is quite a different matter when she wants him to stay, when she is
trembling with excitement, and dreads the moment when he will rise to
go. Who is not well acquainted with the situation, especially when the
parties concerned are an intelligent girl and a dilettante man? In this
case Sonia was the intelligent girl. Her behavior was that of a young
lady who is painfully conscious of her own inexperience. A married
woman who knows what love is can be calm in the presence of the warmest
passion. She knows so well the path which leads astray that she no
longer fears the unknown, and uncertainty has no attraction for her.
I shall probably be told that it is the married women who enjoy these
situations most. That is quite true. There are many married women
for whom marriage is neither _l’amour goût_, nor _l’amour passion_,
nor _l’amour savant_, nor yet any other love, but a mere mechanical
transaction. If the husband is indifferent he cannot rouse his wife’s
love. Not motherhood, but the lover’s kiss, awakes the Sleeping
Beauty. And in the Madonna’s immaculate conception the Church has
incarnated the virgin mother in a profound symbol, which only needs
a psychological interpretation to make it applicable to thousands of
every-day cases.
Extraordinary though it may seem, Sonia was on this occasion, as on
many other occasions in later life, a woman who experienced desire
without being in the least aware of it. She was like a virgin mother
who had borne a child without knowing man’s love. Valdemar Kovalevsky,
who seems to me to have been incapable of filling any position in life,
was certainly not the husband for Sonia, who, as a woman of genius,
cannot be judged by the same standard as ordinary women. The average
man is certainly not suited to be the husband of an exceptional woman
with an original mind and sensitive temperament. But they do not know
themselves; for it is in the nature of great talents to remain hidden
from their owners, who have a long way to go before they attain to the
full realization of their own powers. Only those geniuses whose talents
have little or no connection with their individuality are sufficiently
alive to their own claims not to fall short in life, and not to allow
themselves to be hindered by any natural modesty.
Modesty comes only too naturally to great geniuses. They are conscious
of being different from other people, yet when they are compelled to
come forward they only do so under protest, and then beg every one’s
pardon. The richest natures are the least conscious of their own
powers; they are ashamed because they think that they are offering a
copper, when in reality they are giving away kingdoms. This is doubly
true of the woman who knows nothing of her own powers until the man
comes to reveal them to her.
It was the same with Sonia. She was always giving away handfuls,--her
mind, her learning, her social gifts; she placed them all at the
disposal of others; yet when she, who felt the eternal loneliness which
accompanies genius, asked for the entire affection of another, she was
told that she asked too much. There can be no agreement between that
which genius has the right to ask, and mediocrity the power to give. It
was not a very strong affection that she had for the young Pole, and,
such as it was, it did but intensify her sense of loneliness. It was at
Paris that she received the news of her husband’s suicide; and she, who
suffered so acutely from every successive death in her family, seemed
doomed to receive one blow after another at the hand of fate. She had
scarcely recovered from a nervous fever, resulting from the shock, when
she was called to Stockholm by the supporters of women’s rights,--to
Stockholm, where her soul congealed, her mind was unsatisfied, and
where her body was to die.
VI
I shall only give a hasty sketch of the years that followed. Fru
Leffler has given us a detailed account of them in her book on Sonia,
and Ellen Key, in her life of Fru Leffler, has made the crooked
straight, and has filled in some of the gaps. I shall merely touch upon
this period for the sake of those of my readers who are not acquainted
with either of the above-mentioned works. These years were about the
most lifeless, and, psychologically speaking, the most empty in Sonia’s
life. She was called upon to take part in a movement which from its
commencement was doomed to fail on account of its narrow principles.
The social circle was divided into two separate groups, one of which
consisted of ladies and dilettante youths, very excitable and full of
zeal for reform, but without a single really superior man among them;
the other was of an essentially Swedish character, consisting chiefly
of men; the “better class” of women were excluded, and drinking bouts,
night revelling, club life, song-singing, and easy-going friendship
was the rule. These included a few talented people among their number,
and expressed the utmost contempt for the other group. For the first
time in her life Sonia was made to do ordinary every-day work, and to
exert herself after the manner of a mere drudge, or a cart-horse, for
payment. Her position rendered her dependent on the moral standard of
a _clique_. With the flexibility of her Russian nature, she renounced
the freedom to which she had been accustomed, and devoted herself to
her duties as lecturer under a professor. This work soon began to
weary her to death. Mathematics lost their charm now that the genius
of old Weierstrass was no longer there to elucidate the problems, and
to encourage her to do that which women had hitherto been unable to
accomplish.
For some time she struggled on through thick and thin, without however
sinking low enough to give her superiors no longer any cause to shake
their heads or to admonish her. Lively, witty, and unassuming, the
task of entertaining people at their social gatherings fell to her
share, and she bore the weight of it without a murmur, until her
wasted amiability resulted in an undue familiarity in the circle of
her admirers, of both sexes, causing her much vexation. When the
first excitement of novelty was passed, she devoted herself chiefly
to her true but stolid friend, Anne Charlotte Leffler. It was one of
those friendships which are getting to be very common now that women
are becoming intellectual; it was not the result of any deep mutual
sympathy, nor was it formed out of the fulness of their lives, but
rather from the consciousness that there was something lacking, as
when two _minus_ combine in the attempt to form one _plus_. Then as
soon as the _plus_ is there, all interest in one another, and all
mutual sympathy is a thing of the past, as it proved in this case,
when the Duke of Cajanello appeared on Fru Leffler’s horizon, and
she afterwards, in the honeymoon of her happiness, possibly with the
best of intentions, but with very little tact or sympathy, wrote her
obituary book on Sonia.
One of the results of this friendship was a series of unsuccessful
literary attempts, for which the material was provided by Sonia,
and dramatized by Fru Leffler. The latter tried to put Sonia’s
psychological, intuitive experiences into a realistic shape, and the
result was, as might be expected, a failure. Sonia was a mystic, whose
whole being was one indistinct longing, without beginning and without
end; Fru Leffler was an enlightened woman, daughter of a college
rector, “who worked incessantly at her own development.” Even while
the work of collaboration was in progress, a slight friction began to
make itself felt between the two friends. Fru Leffler was vexed at
having, as she expressed it, “repudiated her own child” in the story
called “Round about Marriage,” in which she attempted to describe the
lives of women who remain unmarried. The storms raised by Sonia’s vivid
imagination oppressed her, and imported a foreign element into her
sober style, resulting in long padded novels, which were too ambitious,
and had a false ring about them. Her influence on Sonia produced the
opposite result. Sonia saw that Fru Leffler was less talented than
she had supposed, and this made her place greater confidence in her
own merits as an author. She began to write a story of her own youth,
called “The Sisters Rajevsky,” which we have already mentioned,
followed by a story about the so-called Nihilists, “Vera Barantzova;”
both these books displayed a wider experience, and contained the
promise of greater things than any of the contemporaneous literature by
women, but they did not receive the recognition which they deserved,
because nobody understood the characters which she depicted.
Up till now there has been a fundamental error in all the attempts made
to understand Sonia Kovalevsky, and the fault is chiefly due to Fru
Leffler, who wrote of her from the following standpoint:--
“I am great and you are great,
We are both equally great.”