THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN QUESTION UPON SINGLE WOMEN
The following comparisons between the life of women, especially their
spiritual life of about fifty years ago and their life as it has shaped
itself under the influence of the woman movement, have been arranged in
_descending_ scale. They begin with that phase of women’s life in which
this influence was most favourable from the point of view of life
enhancement, namely with the life of _unmarried_ women.
You will find to-day, among women seventy or eighty years of age, one or
another type of that fine culture which the gifted single woman, in
comfortable circumstances, could attain in the previous century. Her
home, especially if it was an estate in the country, became a cultural
fireside which radiated light and heat for relatives and friends. The
lesser gifted disseminated, each according to her nature, comfort or
discomfort, yet could in extremity at least be sure of the homage of
their future heirs. Toward those dependent upon them, these women were
sometimes kind, sometimes indifferent, sometimes hard: the feeling of
social responsibility was an unknown idea to them. The _penniless_
single women, on the contrary, were found either in one of the
“respectable” positions which, however, brought with them a multitude of
humiliations: as governess, companion, housekeeper—in Germany also as
maid of honour at one of the numerous small courts—or in some charitable
institution for gentle folks, an asylum for _pauvres honteuses_; but
most frequently in the corner of the home of a relative. This corner was
at times the warmest and most confidential in the whole house, that
corner which the children sought for stories and sweetmeats; the youth,
to find an embrace in which he could pour forth his grief, an ear which
listened to his most beautiful dreams. But it happened more frequently
that the “aunt” looked upon as a “necessary evil” was in reality that
very thing. Humiliated and embittered, she became ingenious in making
those about her suffer for her afflictions. Before they became
hopelessly old, the “aunts” were the laughing stock of the young through
their efforts, in the eleventh hour, to reach the “peaceful haven of
matrimony”; and they themselves looked with envious eyes upon the good
fortune of the young. We meet the unmarried woman of that time at her
best as trusty servant who shared the cares, the joys, and the sorrows
of the family and, in her garret chamber, of which she could be certain
to the day of her death, she looked back upon a rich life lived
vicariously. Not infrequently, she rejected a marriage proposal in order
to stay with her beloved master and mistress to whom she knew she was
indispensable. The superfluous women previously mentioned would have
thrown themselves into the arms of Beelzebub had he come as suitor. When
the years passed, when neither their desire for activity nor the thirst
of the heart nor of the senses was quenched, then not infrequently
insanity conjured up for these lonely women a life-content for which
they had longed in vain. To-day, however, we have for the position which
the expression, “a forsaken old maid,” betokens an entirely new type:
“the glorified spinster,” as the joyous, active, independent unmarried
woman is called by the people among whom she first became a reality.
Among these women, independent through their work, useful to society,
that older type is still occasionally found perhaps, a survival of the
time when emancipation was rather generally interpreted as freedom for
masculinity. The “man-woman” in masculine attire, with weapons of
defence against man in one hand and a cigarette in the other, her soul
filled with mad ambition for her own sex and, as representative of her
entire sex, with hatred toward the other, was however always rare. Now,
she has almost entirely vanished, except alas, the cigarette. But she
smokes it now often with—masculine friends! She follows in her mode of
life, as in her dress, the law of good taste—not to offend; she
endeavours, if only with a flower or two, to give a glimmer of cosy
comfort to her place of work. This comfort, which often comes into the
public life with woman is perhaps the reason why many men, who first
looked with indignation upon feminine fellow-workmen, would now miss
them. The more personal the culture of these women becomes, the more
they endeavour, according to their time and means, to express their
personality in the lines and colours of their dress and in the
arrangement of their room. Those best situated often succeed, toward the
end of their working days, in winning their own little home which they
perhaps share with a friend, or they join a co-operative enterprise and
can thus raise their standard of living. The same women who, at
twenty-five, scornfully declared that they “would never bury their head
in a sauce-pan,” are now, at fifty, consciously aware of the
significance of the table for the activity of the brain; indeed they are
now quite as proud if they have prepared a good dish as they were in
their youth when they passed a fine examination!
It is not to be wondered at that the emancipated women, exactly as all
recently emancipated masculine classes and races, at first groped
insecurely after a new form. The astonishing thing, on the contrary, is
that women adapted themselves so quickly to the new circumstances; that
the transition period furnished so few grotesque types; that the present
shows so many harmonious types, each in her own way. This harmony of
single women is no mere form. It has its inner counterpart in the
satisfaction with their existence, an existence in accord with their
desires. The psychology was not exhaustive which saw in feminism only a
“spinster question,” a question of the unmarried woman, springing from
the surplus of women and the increasing difficulty or disinclination of
men to contract marriage—a question therefore for the ugly, not for the
beautiful; for the unmarried, not for the married; for the poor, not for
the rich. For a great number of beautiful women prefer to remain
unmarried; a great number of rich desire to work; a great number of
married women are zealous suffragists. Fifty years ago, we saw the most
clever women idealise an ape into a god; now, the modern, intelligent
working girl, when she looks about her for her ideal, exercises a lively
criticism. She often flirts with one who exhibits some phase of the
ideal, but she has too clear an understanding and too much to do to
_imagine_ a great feeling for one who is unworthy. So it often happens
that youth has passed without such a feeling having stirred her. And she
enters without deep regret the age when ambition and desire for power
become her life stimulants. From these women of predominating mind and
will is formed more and more what Ferrero calls “The third sex,”
Maudsley, “The sexless ant”: energetic, clever, happy in their work,
cool, but sound; in private life, in the zeal of everyday work, often
egoistic but willing to make sacrifices in face of social exigencies.
So a great part of the fifty-year-old women form an exception since they
with true instinct have remained unmarried. For in the same degree that
their metallic being is well adapted to the machinery of society, it is
little qualified to make a home for husband and children. They do not
depreciate however the value of this task, unless they be fanatic
feminists. In that event they reproach the women who wish to marry with
“betraying the woman cause”; they demand at times, as imperative loyalty
toward this cause, that their friends shall protest against the present
marriage laws at least by the form of their marriage alliance if not
even by not marrying at all. Their theory of equality has at times been
carried so far that—as recently happened in France—they advocate women’s
performing also masculine military service.
But in spite of their aridity and inflexibility of principle how much
more human are even these feminists than the “ill-natured” aunts of
earlier times who became ill-natured exactly because their temperament
was of the kind mentioned above, but who could find no sphere of
operation for their passionate longing for activity. One or another was
perhaps burning with ambition. For there are women as well as men who
can live only as pagan gods, in the blaze and perfume of sacrificial
fires. In their youth these ambitious natures could be satisfied by
triumphs in social life. But later the passion became a fire in a powder
cask and occasioned incessant explosions. Now it is the electric motive
power for an activity of general utility. The “aunts” of the earlier
time who felt themselves always overlooked and injured are most easily
recognised again in the literary and artistic field to which daily bread
or ambition now urges many women, who endeavour to compensate by
energetic work for the talent which nature denied them. Since these
women are ordinarily not people of understanding but of feeling, they
must in a double sense be dissatisfied with a life which in addition is,
in most cases, still filled with economic cares and the humiliations
arising therefrom. And yet in spite of all, how much richer is their
life to-day than it would have been fifty years ago when they would have
been obliged to sit and draw their needles through interminable pieces
of handwork, after ugly patterns and for unnecessary uses, or to compose
sentimental birthday verses for persons whom they abominated.
Yet there are always those women natures who, in the past, had the
qualifications for a real “dear aunt,” who gently calmed the conflicts
and filled the gaps in the home of which they had become members. The
most tender and sensitive of these modern women, who, rain or shine,
year in year out, hasten to and from a work indifferent to them at
heart, not infrequently breathe a sigh of longing for those times when,
as “aunts,” they could have received and imparted warmth in a home. But
then again there come moments when they know how to value the
independence which puts them in a position to give help where otherwise
there would be none; when for example they can send a nephew to college,
or a friend to a sanatarium, or provide their mother with a nurse, which
they themselves can not be.
This kind of single woman fulfills more or less the office of family
provider just as she also is always ready with word and deed in circles
of friends and comrades. These women are so engrossed that the time of
love, sometimes love itself, passes them by without their observing it.
Their youth flees and they feel with sadness that their woman’s life is
unlived. But they persuade themselves that they have had enough in their
work, that many little joys can take the place of great happiness. And
they believe this as truly as the infant believes he is satisfied when
he sucks his own thumb. But some of these women acknowledge perhaps,
when they have passed the fifties, that they were often tempted to call
out to the first best man, “Give me a child.” Sometimes it happens that
in their last youth they appease their mother longing by adopting a
foster child; sometimes they still this longing by a child of their own,
from a love relation or a marriage. This late and uncertain happiness is
often made possible exactly through their work. And then, if not
earlier, they bless this work which gives them the economic possibility,
and thereby also the courage, for this hazardous adventure.
More frequent than these are the cases however where single women, who
have passed their first youth, find in friendship for another woman a
valve for their, in great part, unused feelings. In some natures this
friendship will be jealous and exacting, in others true and devoted. I
wish to emphasise that I speak here of entirely _natural spiritual
conditions_. There is to-day much talk about “Sapphic” women; and it is
even possible that they exist in that impure form which men imagine. I
have never met them, presumably because we rarely meet in life those
with whom no fibre of our being has any affinity. But I have often
observed that the spiritually refined women of our time, just as
formerly the spiritually refined men of Hellas, find most easily in
their own sex the qualities which set their spiritual life in the finest
vibration of admiration, inspiration, sympathy and adoration.
* * * * *
The fundamental types of single women depicted here—the person of
intellect and the person of feeling—are found everywhere. The former
according to current opinion already predominate in America; in Europe,
it seems to me, the latter still prevail. That the main classes include
innumerable varieties, it is needless to say. There are for example the
numerous, quite ordinary, family girls who would be happy if they could
give up their independence in order to enjoy the protection of their
parents’ or their own home. And the same obtains also with the quite as
ancient type of woman, Undine, who—soulless and cold—enslaves all men.
If she is in any civic vocation, she knows how to get the smallest
amount of work for herself and, in case she is engaged in the artistic
field, the best possible criticism. Conscience is an acquaintance which
she has never made and she is also of the opinion that everything
agreeable is permitted to her; she simply slides past anything
disagreeable. Although work belongs to these disagreeable things, she
continues it until she has found means to place her “qualities” in the
most advantageous manner upon the matrimonial market.
The diametrical antithesis of this curvilinear type is the rectilinear.
It has, just as the preceding type, existed at all times. It is the
woman who really never demanded anything of life but “a work and a duty”
and finds both in abundance in all positions of life. She is found year
in year out at her desk, in appropriate working garb, free from all
æsthetics; proud “if she never has needed to miss a day”; proud that she
never has come late. On the contrary she never _goes_ on time. For she
has so grown into the business or the office that she takes everything
upon herself that is required without murmuring, as a well-disciplined
soldier in the ranks of the grey working army; thankful, in addition, if
her long working cares yield her a little life annuity or pension for
her old age. This type is found principally among women over
fifty—fortunately. For this class of women which the pre-feministic
circumstances created, have, by their “frugality” carried almost to the
verge of criminality, by their humble, conscientious servitude, lowered
the wages of their colleagues who are more full of life. These latter
have begun work in the hope that it finally will “free” them; that is,
will give them something of that for which their innermost being longs,
not only their daily bread—a bread which sickness or a turn of affairs
moreover can take from them at any time. And perhaps they never succeed
even in having their own room where they at least could have repose!
Underpaid, overworked, tired to death, who can wonder if these women
have lost, if they ever possessed them, the essential characteristics of
“womanhood”—active kindness, repose even in movement, charming
gentleness? The Icelandic poet of yore already knew that “Few become
fair through wounds.” These women must put all their strength into their
work and into the effort to conceal their underpayment by “respectable”
clothing, or else lose their positions. In everything else they must
economise to the utmost and perhaps in addition be laughed at because of
their economy. They succeed, often admirably, in maintaining themselves
in proud fair struggle, in rejecting “erotic” perquisites to add to
their income and in fulfilling conscientiously the requirements of their
work. Yet to do this with lively interest, with preserved spiritual
elasticity, with quiet amiability—for this their strength does not
suffice, exhausted by insufficient nourishment, insufficient sleep,
still more insufficient recreation, and strained daily to the utmost.
Their nervousness finds vent in either hard or hysterical expression and
the public, annoyed by their ill-humour, divines little of the tragedies
enacted in offices, business houses, cafés or similar places. If a
suicide concludes the tragedy, the public shudders for a moment and—all
goes on as before.
Thus “emancipation” presents itself in reality for millions of women. To
what extent the middle-class woman movement is indirectly to blame for
this fact has already been emphasised.
The essential reason is however the prevailing economic condition of
society. By the uninterrupted fever of competition and the accumulation
of riches, it dries up the soul and robs it of goodness as well as of
joy. When the great, beautiful, eternal sources of joy are exhausted,
the life stimulus is sought in exclusively physical pleasures, which are
always made more exciting in order to be able to arouse still, in the
languid nervous system, feelings of desire. Moreover, there is the
neurosis and weariness of life of the overworked, of those continually
quaking about their material safety, of those who _could_ be revived by
the noble and simple joys of life, to which those jaded with riches are
already not susceptible; but for all these millions and millions such
joys are not accessible because hunger for profit depresses wages. If in
addition to that we take into account the increasing suffering of the
best because of the ever developing feeling of solidarity; and if
finally we consider that women, who through the protection of the home
could preserve something of warmth-irradiating energy, are now in
increasing numbers driven out of the home, then we have some of the
reasons which—in higher degree than the religious and philosophic
reasons which _also_ exist—contribute to the joylessness of our time.
* * * * *
A contribution to the meagre stock of good fortune of the present time
is furnished however by the joy of life among young girls working under
favourable conditions. Among them we meet a new soul condition, which
could be designated, as briefly as possible, as _covetousness_ of
everything which can promote their personal development and a beautiful
_liberality_ with what is thus won. They can gratify their energetic
desire for self-development by sport, travel, books, art and other means
of culture; their freedom of action between working hours is not
restricted by private duties. They can utilise their leisure time and
their income as they please: for recreation, pleasure, social
intercourse, social work or private, charitable activity. No father nor
husband encroaches upon their free agency. And so dear does this liberty
become to them through the manifold joys which it furnishes, that these
young girls, in constantly increasing numbers, refuse to relinquish
their individual independence for the sake of a marriage which, even
presupposing the happiest love, always means a restriction of the
freedom of movement that they enjoyed while single. And since the modern
woman knows that, in the sphere of spiritual values, nothing can be
attained without sacrifice, she prefers to keep free agency and to
sacrifice love. If she chooses in the opposite direction, the task of
adaptation will be the more difficult, the longer and the more intensely
she has enjoyed freedom. The modern young girl, if she deigns to bestow
her hand upon a man, not infrequently has her pretty head so crammed
full of principles of equality that she sometimes (frequently in
America), by written contract establishes her independence to the
smallest detail, which sometimes includes separate apartments and the
prohibition that either of the contracting parties shall have the key to
the apartment of the other.
There are many varieties of the new type of woman. There is for instance
the tom-boy, the “gamin,” who for her life cannot give up the right to
mad pranks and mischievous jokes. There is the girl consumed with
ambition, who sacrifices all other values in order to attain the goal of
her ambition in art or science. There is the fanatically altruistic
girl, who considers the work for mankind so important that she feels she
has not the right to an “egoistic” love happiness. There is the ascetic
ethereal girl, who looks upon marriage and child-bearing as animal
functions, unworthy of a spiritual being, but above all as
_unbeautiful_. And for many of these modern, æsthetically refined,
nervously sensitive young girls the æsthetic point of view is decisive.
All love the work which permits them to live according to their ideals.
Still it often happens that Ovidian metamorphoses take place: that the
young girl sees the cloud or the swan transformed into a god, upon whose
altar she sacrifices, with joy, her free agency and everything else
which only a few weeks earlier she cherished as her holy of holies. The
men who view this process with a smile, think that the anti-erotic
ideals were only a new weapon of defence in the eternal war between the
sexes. But these men often learn how mistaken they were when they
themselves become participators in the war. They meet women so proud, so
sensitive regarding their independence, so merciless in their strength,
so easily wounded in their instincts, so zealous to devote themselves to
their personal task, so determined to preserve their freedom, that
erotic harmony seldom can be realised. Yes, these women often repudiate
love only because it becomes a bond to their freedom, a hindrance to
their work, a force for the bending of their will to another’s will.
The women, womanly in their innermost depths, who really feel free only
when they give themselves wholly, are becoming continually more rare.
But where such a wholly devoted woman still exists, she is the highest
type of woman which any period has produced. Especially if she springs
from a family of old culture. She has then, combined in her personality,
the best of tradition and the best of the revolution evoked by the woman
movement. The fibres of her being absorb their nourishment with
instinctive certainty out of the fruitful soil which pride, devotion to
duty, family love, requirements of culture and refinement of form, for
many generations, have created. But her conscious soul-life flowers in
the sun of the present; she thinks new thoughts and has new aims. Just
as little as she disavows her desire for love, so little does she desire
love under other conditions than those of spiritual unity and human
equality. If she meets the man who can give her this and if she loves
him, then he can be more certain than the man of any other time that he
is really loved, that no ulterior motive obscures the devotion of this
free woman. He has seen her susceptible to all the riches of life; has
seen her assist in social tasks, perform the duty of every day joyful in
her work, proud of her independence attained through her work. He knows
that just as she is she would have continued to be if he had not entered
into her life. How different is this girl from the one of earlier times,
who was driven by the emptiness of her life into continual love affairs,
which could not lead to a marriage nor exist in a marriage that
possessed nothing of love!
This most beautiful new type of woman approaches spiritually the
aforementioned type of single, aged women, who because of their economic
independence found time for a fine personal culture. These followed not
infrequently in their youth, from a distance it is true, but with joyous
sympathy, the progress of the woman movement. They shook their heads
later over its extremes. With new joy they regard the young girls just
described, in whom they find a more universal development than in
themselves, because these young girls have been developed through active
consumption of power which was spared to the older women, although they
must have summoned much _passive_ energy in order to maintain their
personality against convention. The young girls find often in these
older women a fine understanding, which they richly reciprocate. Such
terms of friendship are the most beautiful which the present has to
offer: they resemble the meeting of the morning and evening red in the
bright midsummer nights of the North.
No time could have been so rich in exquisite feminine personalities, at
all ages and in all stages of life, as ours. We must not draw our
conclusions regarding the abundance of such women, in the older culture
epochs, from the illustrious names of women which incessantly recur in
the pictures of the earlier times—like stage soldiers—until they give
the illusion of a great host.
But exquisite women are even to-day exceptional. The Martha type rather
than the Mary type predominates. This is due on one hand to decreasing
piety, on the other hand to the kind of working and society life. Fifty
years ago single women were often spiritually petrified, now more often
they cannot succeed in settling into any form. Their existence, turned
outwardly, widens their sphere of interest but makes their soul-life
shallow. Restlessness is most unfavourable to the “development of the
personality,” which was however the goal of the emancipation of woman.
This development is delayed most of all perhaps by the lack of personal
contact with other personalities, of immediate, intimate human
connections. This can, from no point of view, be supplied by the society
or club life in which single women are to-day absorbed.