the firm, dark eyebrows, arched over eyes that are far apart, give the
face an expression that is peculiarly honest and straightforward. The
eyes gaze fixedly and dreamily into the distance; the nose is short,
with nostrils slightly distended, the mouth soft and determined, with
the upper lip passionately compressed. The face is round as a child’s,
and the neck short and powerful, on a squarely built, fully developed
body.
VI
_The Woman’s Rights Woman_
I
The latter half of our century is comparatively poor in remarkable
women. Nowadays, when women are more exacting than they used to be,
they are of less importance than of old. We have rows of women artists,
women scientists, and authoresses; the countries of Europe are overrun
with them, but they are all mediocrities; and in the upper classes,
although there are plenty of eccentric ladies, they are abnormities,
not individuals. The secret of a woman’s power has always lain in what
she is, rather than in what she does, and that is where the women of
to-day appear to be strangely lacking. They do all kinds of things,
they study and write books without number, they collect money for
various objects, they pass examinations and take degrees, they hold
meetings and give lectures, they start societies, and there never was
a time when women lived a more public life than at present. Yet, with
all that, they are of less public importance than they used to be.
Where are the women whose drawing-rooms were filled with the greatest
thinkers and most distinguished men of their day? They do not exist.
Where are the women with delicate tact, who took part in the affairs
of the nation? They are a myth. Where are the women whose influence
was acknowledged to be greater than the counsel of ministers? Where
are the women whose love is immortalized in the works of the greatest
poets? Where are the women whose passionate devotion was life and joy
to man, bearing him on wings of gladness towards the unknown, and
leading him back to the beautiful life on earth? They have been, but
where are they now? The more that woman seeks to exert her influence
by main force, the less her influence as an individual; the more she
imbues this century with her spirit, the fewer her conquests as woman.
Her influence on the literature of the eighties has shown itself in an
intense, ingrained hatred. It is she who has inspired man to write his
hymn of hatred to woman,--Tolstoi in the “Kreutzer Sonata,” Strindberg
in a whole collection of dramas, Huysman in “En Ménage,” while many a
lesser star is sceptical of love; and in the writings of the younger
authors, where this scepticism is not so apparent, we find that they
understand nothing at all about women. It is a peculiar sign of the
times that, in spite of the many restrictions of former days, men and
women never have stood wider apart than at present, and have never
understood one another more badly than now. The honest, unselfish
sympathy, the true, I should like to say organical union, which is
still to be observed in the married life of old people, seems to have
vanished. Each goes his or her own way; there may be a nervous search
for each other and a short finding, but it is soon followed by a speedy
losing. Is it the men who are to blame? The men of former days were
doubtless very different, but in their relations to women they were
scarcely more sociable than at present.
Or is it the women who are at fault? For some time past I have watched
life in its many phases, and I have come to the conclusion that it is
the woman who either develops the man’s character or ruins it. His
mother, and the woman to whom he unites himself, leave an everlasting
mark upon the impressionable side of his nature.
In most cases the final question is not, What is the man like? but,
What kind of a woman is she? And I think that the answer is as follows:
A woman’s actions are more reasonable than they used to be, and her
love is also more reasonable. The consequence is a lessening of the
passion that is hers to give, which again results in a corresponding
coolness on the part of the man. The modern system of educating girls
by teaching them numerous languages, besides many other branches of
knowledge, encourages a superficial development of the understanding,
and renders women more exacting, without making them more attractive;
and while the average level of intelligence among women is raised,
and the self-conceit of the many largely increased, the few who are
original characters will in all probability disappear beneath the
pressure of their own sex, and in consequence of the apathy which
governs the mutual relations of both sexes.
The age in which we live has produced another class of women in their
stead, who, since they represent the strongest majority, must be
reckoned as the type. It is natural that they should have neither the
influence nor the fascination of the older generation, and they are not
as happy. They are neither happy themselves, nor do they make others
happy; the reason is that they are less womanly than the others were.
From their midst the modern authoresses have gone forth, women who in
days to come will be named in connection with the progress of culture;
and I think that Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello,
will long be remembered as the most characteristic representative of
the type.
II
She was the supporter of a movement that originated with her, and
ceased when she died. She was known in countries far beyond her
native Sweden; her books were read and discussed all over Germany,
and her stories were published in the _Deutsche Rundschau_. She had a
clearer brain than most women writers; she could look reality in the
face without being afraid, and indeed she was not one who was easily
frightened. She was very independent, and understood the literary side
of her calling as well as its practical side, and her struggles were
by no means confined to her writings. She threw aside the old method
of seeking to gain her ends by means of womanly charm; she wanted to
convince as a woman of intellect. She condemned the old method which
used to be considered the special right of women, and fought for the
new right, _i.e._, recognition as a human being. All her arguments were
clear and temperate; she was not emotional. The minds from which she
fashioned her own were Spencer and Stuart Mill. Nature had endowed her
with a proud, straightforward character, and she was entirely free from
that affected sentimentality which renders the writings of most women
unendurable.
In the course of ten years she became celebrated throughout Europe,
and she died suddenly about six months after the birth of her first
child. Sonia Kovalevsky, the other and greater European celebrity, who
was Professor of Mathematics, and her most intimate friend, also died
suddenly, as did several others,--Victoria Benediktson (Ernst Ahlgren),
her fellow-countrywoman, and for many years her rival; Adda Ravnkilde,
a young Danish writer, who wrote several books under her influence; and
a young Finnish authoress named Thedenius. The last three died by their
own hands; Sonia Kovalevsky and Fru Edgren-Leffler died after a short
illness.
Fru Leffler was the eldest,--she lived to be forty-three; the others
died younger,--the last two very much younger. But they all made the
same attempt, and they all failed. They wanted to stand alone, they
demanded their independence, they tried to carry into practice their
views with regard to man.
George Sand made the same attempt, and she succeeded. But then her
independence took a very different form from theirs. She followed the
traditions of her family, and set no barriers to love; she drank of the
great well of life until she had well-nigh exhausted it. She was quite
a child of the old _régime_ in her manner of life. The efforts made by
these other women, at the close of the nineteenth century, took the
form of wishing to dispense with man altogether. It is this feature of
Teutonic chastity, bounding on asceticism, that was the tragic moment
in the lives of all these short-lived women.
It is a strange piece of contemporary history of which I am about to
write. It is this that is the cause of the despondent mood peculiar to
the last decade of our century; it is this that acts as a weight upon
our social life, that makes our leisure wearisome, our joys cold. It is
this decay in woman’s affection that is the greatest evil of the age.
One of the tendencies of the time is the craving for equality, which
seeks to develop woman’s judgment by increasing her scientific
knowledge. It might have answered from the woman’s point of view, so
far, at least, as the man was concerned, for it does not much matter to
a woman whom she loves, as long as she loves some one. But women have
become so sensible nowadays that they refuse to love without a decisive
guarantee, and this calculating spirit has already become to them a
second nature to so great an extent that they can no longer love,
without first taking all kinds of precautionary measures to insure
their future peace and comfortable maintenance, to say nothing of the
unqualified regard which they expect from their husbands.
All things are possible from a state of mind such as we have described,
except love, and love cannot flourish upon it. If there is a thing for
which woman is especially created,--that is, unless she happens to be
different from other women,--it is love. A woman’s life begins and ends
in man. It is he who makes a woman of her. It is he who creates in her
a new kind of self-respect by making her a mother; it is he who gives
her the children whom she loves, and to him she owes their affection.
The more highly a woman’s mind and body are developed, the less is she
able to dispense with man, who is the source of her great happiness or
great sorrow, but who, in either case, is the only meaning of her life.
For without him she is nothing.
The woman of to-day is quite willing to enjoy the happiness which man
brings, but when the reverse is the case, she refuses to submit.
She thinks that, with a little precaution, she can bring the whole
of life within the compass of a mathematical calculation. But before
she has finished her sum, and proved it to see if it is correct,
happiness and sorrow have flown past her, leaving her desolate and
forsaken,--hardened for want of love, miserable in spite of a cleverly
calculated marriage, and imbittered in the midst of joyless ease and
sorrow unaccounted for.
Such was the fate of these five short-lived authoresses, although
they might not have described it as I have done. Anne Charlotte
Edgren-Leffler was chief among the Scandinavian women’s rights women
who have made for themselves a name in literature. Her opinions were
scattered abroad among thousands of women in Germany and in the North,
and as she died without being able to dig up the seed which she had
sown, she will always be considered as a type of the _fin de siècle_
woman, and will remain one of its historical characters.
I write this sketch in the belief that it will not be very unlike the
one she would have written of herself, had she lived long enough to do
so.
III
Anne Charlotte Leffler was born at Stockholm, and, like all her
townsfolk, she was tall, strong, and somewhat angular. She was by
nature cold and critical, and in this respect she did not differ
from the women of North Sweden. The daughter of a college rector,
she had received a thoroughly good education, and was probably far
better educated than the majority of women, as she grew up in the
companionship of two brothers, who were afterwards professors.
When she was nineteen years of age, she published her first work, a
little play, in two acts, called “The Actress.” The piece describes the
struggle between love and talent, and the scene is laid in the rather
narrow sphere of a small country town. The characters are decidedly
weak, but not more so than one would naturally expect from the pen
of an inexperienced girl of the upper class. There was nothing to
show that it was the work of a beginner. Her faculty for observation
is extraordinarily keen, her descriptions of character are terse,
striking, and appropriate, and the construction of the piece is clever.
It shows a thoughtful mind, and there is none of the clumsy handling
noticeable in young writers; the conflict is carefully thought out, and
described with mathematical clearness. But however ornate an author’s
style, however remarkable her intellect, these qualities do not form
the most important part of her talent as a woman and an authoress. In
considering the first book of a writer who afterwards became celebrated
throughout Europe, the question of primary importance is this: How much
character is revealed in this book?
Or, to put the question with greater precision, since it concerns a
woman: How much character is there that the author was not able to
suppress?
The sky seems colored with the deep glow of dawn; it is the great
expectancy of love. Here we have the writing of a young girl who knows
nothing about love except the one thing,--that it is a woman’s whole
existence. She has never experienced it, but her active mind has
already grasped some of its difficulties; and one great difficulty,
which must not be overlooked, is the bourgeois desire to maintain
a sure footing. An actress is going to marry into a respectable
middle-class family. Nobody in this section of society can think of
love otherwise than clad in a white apron and armed with a matronly
bunch of keys. Love here means the commonplace. The actress is
accustomed to a worse but wider sphere; love for her means to become a
great actress, to attain perfection in her art, but to her intended it
means that she should love him and keep house.
The problem does not often present itself like this in real life, and
if it did the result would in all probability be very different; in
the imagination of a well-bred girl of eighteen, like Anne Charlotte
Leffler, it was the only conclusion possible. And as he will not
consent to her wishes, and she refuses to give way to his; as he has
no desire to marry an actress, and she no intention of becoming a
housewife, they separate with mutual promises of eternal platonic love.
The end is comic, but it is meant to be taken seriously. No matter how
it begins, the ordinary woman’s book always ends with platonic love;
and it is very characteristic of Anne Charlotte Leffler that her first
play should have a platonic and not a tragic ending.
The tragic element, which generally assumes supernatural proportions
in the imagination of the young, did not appeal to her; her life was
placed in comfortable, bourgeois surroundings, and she was perfectly
contented with it.
We find the same want of imagination in all the Swedish authoresses,
from Fru Lenngren, Frederica Bremer, and Fru Flygare-Carlén onwards.
A few years later Anne Charlotte Leffler wrote a three-act play, called
“The Elf,” of which the two first acts afford the best possible key to
her own psychology. It was acted for the first time in 1881, but it was
probably written soon after her marriage, in 1872, with Edgren, who was
at that time in the service of the government.
IV
Fru Edgren was one of those proud, straightforward women who would
never dream of allowing any one to commiserate them. She made no
attempt to suit her actions to please the world; her sole ambition was
to show herself as she really was. When she wished to do a thing, she
did it as quickly as possible, and without any one’s help. She wrote
under the influence of her personal impressions, her personal judgment,
and her personal opinions; whatever she might attain to in the future,
she was determined to have no one but herself to thank for it. But she
was a woman. Though usually possessed of a clear judgment, she did
not sufficiently realize what it means for a woman to enter upon a
literary career by herself. She succeeded in her literary career; but
in doing so she sacrificed the best part of her life, and was obliged
to suppress her best and truest aspirations, thereby destroying a large
amount of real artistic talent.
There are few things that afford me more genuine pleasure than the
books of modern authors. I enjoy them less on account of what they tell
me than for that which they have been unable to conceal. When they
write their books, they write the history of their inner life. You
open a book and you read twenty lines, and in the tone and character
of those twenty lines you seem to feel the beating of the writer’s
pulse. In the same way as a fine musical ear can distinguish a single
false note in an orchestra, a fine psychological instinct can discern
the true from the false, and can tell where the author describes his
own feelings and where he is only pretending--can discern his true
character from among the multitude of conscious and unconscious masks,
and can say: This is good metal, and that a worthless composition,
wherewith he makes a dupe of himself and of others.
The woman who attempts to write without a man to shield her, to throw a
protecting arm around her, is an unfortunate, incongruous being. That
which sets her soul aglow--which calls loudly within her--she dare not
say. When a man wishes to be a great writer, he defies conventionalism
and compels it to become subservient to him; but for a lonely woman,
conventionalism is her sole support, not only outwardly, but inwardly
also. It forms a part of her womanly modesty; it is the guide of her
life, from which naught but love can free her; that is why the more
talented a woman is, the more absolutely love must be her pilot.
Fru Edgren’s best play and her two most interesting stories are “The
Elf,” “Aurora Bunge,” and “Love and Womanhood.” None of her other works
can be said to equal these in depth of feeling, and none strike a more
melancholy note. There is an emotional, nervous life in them which
presents an attractive contrast to the cold irony of her other works.
She has put her whole being into these writings, with something of her
womanly power to charm; while in the others we meet with the clear
insight, the critical faculty, and the rare sarcasm to which they owe
their reputation.
Yet in these three works we notice how very much she is hedged in on
all sides by conventionalism. “The Elf,” “Love and Womanhood,” and
“Aurora Bunge” make us think of a large and beautiful bird that cannot
fly because its long, swift wings have been broken by a fall from the
nest.
The “elf” is the wife of the respected mayor of a small country
town. Her father was a Swedish artist, whose whole life was spent in
travelling, because every time that he came home he was driven away by
the narrow social life of Sweden. When he is lying on his deathbed,
he leaves his penniless child to the care of his younger friend, the
Mayor, who knows no better way of providing for her than by making her
his wife. He is universally considered the best son, the best partner
in business, and the best man--in the town. The elf wanders about the
woods, and becomes the subject of much gossip, likewise of envy, among
the smart ladies of the town.
One evening when they are giving a party, and she forgets to play the
part of hostess, their neighbor, a Baron, arrives with his sister.
Both, no longer young, free from illusions, liberal in thought and
speech, seem to carry with them a breath from a bigger world; their
mere presence serves to make the elf thoughtlessly happy, and from
henceforward she sits daily to the Baron for a picture representing
Undine when the knight carries her through the wood, and her soul
awakes within her. The elf’s soul--_i.e._, love--is also awakened.
She feels herself drawn towards this man, who has sufficient fire
to awaken her womanhood with a kiss. She does not wish, she does not
think, but she would not like to be separated from him; he lives in an
atmosphere that suits her, and in which she thrives. She is still a
child; but the child would like to wake. It is true that her conscience
reproaches her with regard to the Mayor, but here the circumstances are
related as though she were not quite married,--that is a mistake which
nearly all Teutonic authoresses make.
The Baron tells her the story of Undine. The knight finds her at the
moment when the brook stretches forth his long white arm to draw her
back, but he does not let her go; he takes her in his arms and carries
her away, and she looks up at him with a half anxious expression--there
is something new in this expression. She is no longer Undine. She
loves. She has a soul.
In this drama, Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, the future leader of
the woman’s rights movement, makes the confession that a woman’s soul
is--love. She is the only Swedish woman writer who would have owned as
much.
The Baron is a decadent. Fru Edgren took this type from real life long
before the decadence made its appearance in literature. He had enjoyed
all sensations with delight and inner emotion, until the woman in the
elf opens her eyes in the first moment of half consciousness, and when
that happens she becomes indifferent to him. His passion cools. It
is true that his actions still tend in the same direction, but he is
able to gaze at his thoughts critically. He is not the knight who lifts
Undine out of the cold water. He leaves her lying in the brook.
Among the experiences by means of which “independent” women, with a
“vocation,” awake to womanhood, this is probably the most common. It
is very difficult to define their feelings when they realize a change
in the man who first aroused their affections; but I think that I am
not far wrong in saying that it is something akin to loathing. The
more sensitive the woman, and the more innocent she is, the longer the
loathing will last. However cold her outward behavior may appear, the
feeling is still there.
There is nothing that a woman resents more keenly than when a man
plays with her affections, and neglects her afterwards. The more
inexperienced the woman, the more unmanly this behavior seems. If she
is a true woman, her disappointment will be all the greater; she will
feel it not only with regard to this single individual, but it will
cast a shadow over all men.
The last act reveals the author’s perplexity. From an æsthetic point
of view the ending is cold, and to a certain extent indifferently
executed; but judged from a psychological point of view, it is
thoroughly Swedish. Considered as the writing of a young lady in the
year 1880, it must be confessed that the dialogue is tolerably strong,
even _piquante_; but in order to please the highly respected public, it
is necessary for the play to end well.
Suddenly they one and all--in this land of pietism and sudden
conversion--beat their breasts and confess their sins. The Mayor
examines himself, and repents that he was selfish enough to marry the
elf; his mother repents because she cared more for her son than her
daughter-in-law; the elf repents because she almost allowed herself
to be betrayed into falling in love; and the Baron’s sister, who,
throughout the piece, has always held aloft the banner of love and
liberty, repents in a general way, without any particular reason being
given. Thus everything returns to its former condition, and Undine
remains in the duck-pond.
With this satisfying termination, “The Elf” survived a large number of
performances.
The question which suggests itself to my mind is: Whether the author
intended the piece to end in this manner? Or was the original ending
less conventional, and was Fru Edgren obliged to alter it in order
that the play might be acted? What else could she do? A lonely woman
like her dared not sin against the public morals. It were better to
sin against anything else, only not against the public morals; for in
that case they would have condemned her to silence, and her career
would have been at an end. The keynote of the piece was the yearning to
escape from the long Swedish winters and the gossip by the fireside,
out into the fresh air, into the light and warmth of the South.
V
Ten years afterwards Fru Edgren returned to the same problem in “Love
and Womanhood,” and this time she treated it with greater delicacy and
more depth of feeling.