THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON THE DAUGHTERS
As late as sixty or seventy years ago, the daughters of good families
had still few points of contact with life outside the four walls of the
home. From the hands of nurse-maids they went into those of the
governess, and after confirmation, studies were at an end. If it was a
cultured home then reading aloud or music was often practised, whereby
it is true no “specific education” qualifying them for examinations was
attained, but frequently a fine universal human culture. There was
always employment in the house for the zeal for work. The great presses
were filled with linen which was not infrequently spun and woven by the
daughters; in the autumn they assembled for sausage-making and candle
dipping; later, for Christmas baking and roasting; in summer endless
rows of glasses of preserves were set in the store-room. Before
Christmas, night after night, Christmas presents were made; after
Christmas, night after night, they danced. At these balls those in outer
respects uncomely, received a foretaste of that waiting which must fill
their life for many long years: would the invitation to the dance—or the
wooing respectively—come or not? Every man whose shadow merely fell upon
the scene, was immediately considered from the point of view of a
suitor. As the years went by the girl, who before twenty-five years of
age was considered an “old maid,” saw how the glance of the father and
the brothers became gloomy, yes, she could even hear how “unfortunate”
she was. If such a daughter lived in a home poor in books—and most of
them were—then she could not even procure a book she wished. For the
daughters worked year in year out without wages, in case they did not
receive meagrely doled out pin-money which only through great ingenuity
sufficed for their toilette. All year long there were christenings and
birthday celebrations; in summer games were played, where it was
possible riding parties arranged, in winter sleighing parties were
organised. Other physical exercise was considered superfluous. The young
girls were averse to going to a neighbouring estate if it lay a mile
away; and during the week to take a long walk for pleasure or sit down
with a book, which had been borrowed, would be considered simply as
idling away one’s time. In summer a cold bath was permissible—a warm
bath was used only in cases of sickness—but swimming was considered so
unwomanly, that whoever had learned it must keep it secret. Rowing,
tobogganing and skating were, even if permitted in the country, yet half
in discredit as “masculine.”
When grandfather related an heroic deed of some ancestress whose proud
countenance shone out among the family portraits, then the daughter of
such a family must have asked herself why this deed was lauded while
everything “manly” was forbidden her.
The days and years went by at the embroidery frame or netting needles,
amid continuous chatter about the family and neighbours, amid eternal
friction and in disputing back and forth over mere trifles. The confined
nervous force sought an outlet, and in an existence where each
one—according to the first paragraph of family rights—interfered in the
greatest as in the smallest concerns of all the others, there was always
plenty of material about which to become irritated and excited.
In the country, life was, however, fuller and fresher than in the city
where the young girl had less to do and never dared go out alone; yes,
where a walk was considered so superfluous, that the mother of the great
Swedish feminist Fredrika Bremer advised her daughters to jump up and
down behind a chair when they insisted that they needed exercise!
* * * * *
The relation to the parents, even if the principle of unswerving and
mute obedience was not wholly carried out, was ordinarily a reverential
alienation. Neither side knew the inner life of the other. The
temperament of the mother determined the everyday domestic comforts, the
will of the father the external occurrences of life, from the trip to
the ball to marriage. The daughter whose inclination corresponded with
the will of the father considered herself fortunate. The one married
against her will wept, but obeyed. As an almost fabulous occurrence it
was related of one or another girl that she dared to say “No” before the
marriage altar; cases were not unusual in which daughters received a box
on the ear and were confined to their room until they accepted the
bridegroom whom the father had chosen. Even if a mother, moved by the
recollections of her own youth, attempted to support a daughter it
rarely succeeded. For the power of the father rested quite as heavily
upon the wife. But the worst however was to water myrtle year after
year, without ever being able to cut it for a bridal wreath. Even she,
who in her heart loved another, found it therefore often wisest to give
her consent to an acceptable suitor. Only the one whose dowry was valued
at a “ton of gold”—or who also was a celebrated beauty—could run the
risk of declining a courtship; yes, she could permit herself to occasion
it only to decline it. The more suitors she could recount, the prouder
she was; such a beauty even embroidered around her bridal gown the
monograms of all her earlier wooers.
The unmarried remained behind in an environment where the idea prevailed
that “woman’s politics are her toilettes, her republic is her household
and literature belongs to her trinkets.” The talented daughter sewed the
fine starched shirts in which her stupid brother went to the academy and
sighed therewith: “Ah, if one only were a man.”
When the income of the house was small, she increased it perhaps by
embroidery, sold in deepest secrecy; for it was a disgrace for a girl of
good family to work for money. For her rebellious thoughts she had
perhaps a girl friend to whom she could pour out her heart—or a sister.
But it often fared with sisters growing old together, just as it must
fare with North-pole explorers wintering together, that those holding
together of necessity finally loathe one another from the bottom of
their hearts. And yet the sisters were most fortunate who could grow old
and die in their childhood home and were not compelled to become old
household fixtures in the home of relatives.
Not infrequently this last fate was their portion because a father, a
brother or a guardian out of personal, economical self-interest
prevented their marriage, or a brother through debt or studies had
defrauded them of their inheritance.
It was not the woman movement but the religious movement, beginning
among the Northern peoples almost simultaneously with it, called in
Sweden “Läseri” (“Reading”) that was the first spiritual emancipation
for the old or young unmarried girls—likewise for wives who longed for a
deeper content. Because they took seriously the Bible doctrine that one
should disregard the commands of the family in order to follow Christ,
the home gradually became accustomed to one of the feminine members’
going her own way. Often amid great struggles. For the “Reader” was more
or less considered as insane; the father was ashamed of her, the mother
mourned over her, the brothers laughed at her. But nothing could hinder
those strong in their faith from following the inner voice. And so these
women, without knowing it themselves, were a bridge to that emancipation
of women to which they themselves later—Bible in hand—were often an
obstacle.
* * * * *
The movement _could_ not however be prevented. And now—how is it now in
the family? Already the ten-year-old talks about what she is sometime
going to be. Now, the sisters go with the brothers to school or to the
academy and share their intellectual interests as well as their life of
sport. Now, the fathers and mothers sit at home often alone, for the
daughters belong to that host of self-supporting girls who can gratify
the parents by short visits only. Alas, these visits are not always an
unclouded joy. There are collisions between the old and the young often
over seeming bagatelles. But a feather shows which way the wind blows
and the parents observe that, in the spiritual being of the daughter,
the wind blows from an entirely different direction from theirs. The
daughter, on the other hand, thinks that perfect calm prevails in the
being of her parents; she wishes to raise the dust. The mother pleads
her cause in dry and offended manner, the daughter in superior and
impetuous words. Accustomed to her freedom, she encounters again at home
control over her commissions and omissions, attempts upon her privacy
from which she had been freed by leaving home. And they separate again
each with a sigh that they “have had so little of one another.” In other
cases—when the parents have followed the times and the daughters
understand that not only children but also parents must be educated with
tenderness—then the visits to the parents’ home become on both sides
elevating episodes in their lives. The daughters repose in the parental
tenderness, which they have only now learned to value when they compare
it with their customary loneliness. The parents confide to the daughter
their cares which she sometimes can effectively lighten, and they revive
with her spiritual interests which they themselves had to lay aside.
Through her own working life the daughter has gained an entirely new
respect for her parents. Through her independence of parental authority
she has now gained a frankness, which makes a real interchange of ideas
possible. They discover that they can have something reciprocal for one
another. The father, who perhaps at first sighed when the young faces
vanished out of the home, now admits that it would have been foolish if
the whole troop of girls had continued here at home and so had stood
there at his demise, empty-handed, without professional training. The
mother, who had helped them persuade the father, smiles, when he insists
that he “would not exchange his capable girls for boys.” And he is not
at all afraid that the daughters could not marry if they would; he
remembered indeed how his contemporaries declared that they “would never
look at a girl student, a Blue stocking,” and yet so many of these were
now happily married to—girl students.
Beside these results of the independence of the daughters which elevate
life for all sides, there are opposite cases; when, for example, a
single daughter _without_ outer economic compulsion or inner personal
necessity, impelled only by the current of the time, leaves a home where
her contribution of work could be significant, in order to follow a
vocation outside. The results are often of doubtful value, not only from
a social point of view but also from that of the family and herself,
when the daughter remains at home but carries on a work outside. This
comes partly because they are contented with less pay and thus lower the
wages of those who support themselves entirely; partly because they
over-exert themselves. In those cases where several daughters can share
with one another the domestic duties, no over-exertion results perhaps.
But when a single daughter combines an exacting professional work with
quite as exacting household duties, then she is exhausted by her double
task; then she feels the burden, not the joy, of work. For all
professional working girls who remain at home, have moreover in
addition, even under the most favorable circumstances, the spiritual
strain of turning from work back again to the gregarious demands of the
home, as well as to the many different attractions and repulsions,
antipathies and sympathies which determine the deviations in temperature
of the home; the strain of respecting the sensibilities which must be
spared or of paying attention to the domestic demands which must be
refused, if the work is not to suffer from lack of rest and time for
preparation. All this can be so nerve racking that the young girl is
seized with an irresistible longing for a little home of her own, where
she would be mistress of her leisure time, and could see her own
friends—not alone those of her family,—where she could join those who
held the same views, where she, in a word, would live her life according
to the dictates of her personal demands. If she can, she often does
this. For to-day young girls _live to apply_ the principle of the woman
movement—individualism. The older women’s rights advocates desired, it
is true, that woman should be allowed to “develop her gifts,” but she
should “administer” them for the benefit of others; they desired that
she should receive _new rights_ from law and custom, but that she should
seek always in _law and custom support and security for her action_. The
young women’s rights advocates, on the other hand, believe that their
own growth, just as that of animals and trees, is intended above all for
self-development, that in their own character the direction for their
growth is specified, and that they have not the right to confine
themselves by circumstances or subject themselves to influences by which
they know they hinder the development of their powers, according to
their individual natures. The more refined the feeling of personality
becomes, the more exactly these young people understand how to choose
what is essential for them and to repudiate what is a hindrance. But
before they attain this certainty they evince often an unnecessary lack
of consideration, and the family is often right when it speaks of the
egoism of youth. They find no opportunity for helping father or mother
nor for participation in the elders’ interests. The whole family is
rarely assembled even at meal-time; the daughters as well as the sons
rush off to lectures, work, sport, clubs. The mother who sees how
occupied the daughters are has not the heart to add to their work or to
thwart them in their pleasures; thus she allows the selfishness of the
young creatures to increase to the point where she herself in
indignation begins—seasonably and unseasonably—to react against it. The
young girl answers her mother’s reproof then with the complaint that,
“Mamma does not understand” her and that she is “behind her time.”
Especially the young examination-champions distinguish themselves by
their arrogance in the family as in the club, where they look down upon
the older ladies who have not passed examinations just as they do upon
their own mother.
It fares best in the families, and they are even now numerous, where the
mother herself has studied or worked outside the home and therefore
knows what domestic services she may or may not require; where she
herself personally understands the intellectual occupation of the young
people and has preserved her own youthfulness, so that she becomes not
infrequently the real friend of her daughters and sons. If the mother,
on the contrary, was one of the many who, at the beginning of the woman
movement, sacrificed her own talent to the wishes of her family or the
demands of the home, in spite of the possibilities for its development
made accessible to her at that time, then she has often absolutely no
comprehension of the egoism of her daughter. She herself had acted so
entirely differently! Or she understands fully that in her daughters as
well as in her sons she views the attainment of a new conception of
life, with all its Storm and Stress, which the spring-times in the life
of mankind bring with them—an attainment in which, to her sorrow, she
could not take part in her youth.
At such spring-times youth is not, as the parents hoped, sunlight and
the twittering of birds in the home; but March storms and April clouds.
The parents feel themselves at first swept out, superfluous,
disillusioned. They are angered but rejuvenated, thanks to all the new
points of view that youth makes valid. Yes, father and mother sometimes
could live through a second youth if their own contemporaries did not
depress their buoyancy by their disapproving astonishment and the
children by their cool rejection of the comradeship of their parents.
But in spite of this twofold opposition, there are now fathers and
mothers who are able to enjoy the riches of life quite as youthfully as
and more deeply than their children; while the parents of earlier times,
especially the mother, forever stagnated as early as forty. More and
more frequently we find mothers who, like their daughters, lead a
spiritually rich and emotional life, who have so preserved their
physical youthfulness and who possess moreover through experience and
self-culture so refined a soul-life, that, in regard to the impression
they make, they are not infrequently the rivals of their daughters. They
are already revelations of that type of woman which, in token of
emancipation, has found the equilibrium between the old devoted ideal
and the new self-assertive ideal. They view life from a height which
gives them a survey also over the essential, in questions concerning
their own children. Even if these become something other than the
mothers wish, these mothers are so penetrated with the idea of
individualism that they let the children follow their own course.
Modern fathers rarely find so happy a home as it once could be with a
bevy of daughters always at hand. But they find the home richer in
content, often also freer from petty dissensions. For in the measure in
which _each_ member of the family desires his right and his freedom, do
all gradually learn to respect those of others. If the parents consider
with dignity _their_ right and _their_ freedom, then a reciprocal
consideration results after the boldness which youth evinces under the
first influence of the intoxication of freedom. Youth, at first so proud
and strong in their assurance of bringing new ideal values to life,
begin themselves to experience how the world treats these; and what they
once called their parents’ prejudice appears to them now often in a new
light. Their self-assertion becomes a product of culture, out of a raw
material. The manifestations of their individualism become continually
more discreet, more controlled, but at the same time more essential and
more effective. When then the young people have found _their_ way and
the parents endeavour to turn them aside to the main road—which they
call the way of wisdom or of duty—then certainly and with right the
young people put themselves on the defensive.
Even a devoted daughter cannot bring to the home to-day as undivided a
heart as formerly. But this gift was earlier a matter of course, so to
speak, a natural result of the conditions. But if to-day a girl
sacrifices a talent to filial duty, then it is an infinitely greater
personal sacrifice; a real choice. And if she does not make the
sacrifice, it is not in the least always on the ground of egoism. It
happens often in conviction that the unconditional demand of
Christianity that the strong must have consideration for the weak, makes
these latter often egoists and tyrants; that the strong, who are more
significant for the whole, are thus rendered inefficient.
If a troop of athletic boys continually conformed to the level of the
weakest, then all would remain upon a lower plane, and the weak find no
incentive to seek _their_ triumphs in another sphere.
On the other hand it is fine and eminently sane and in harmony with the
laws of spiritual growth, when the strong shall help the weak to reach a
goal which is thus, in his own peculiar direction, really attainable by
him. Neither paganism nor Christianity has created the most _beautiful_
strength; it is a union of both. It has found its most perfect
expression in art in Donatello’s St. George, in Michelangelo’s David:
youths, whose victorious power conceals compassion and whose compassion
embraces even the conquered: symbols of strength which has become kind,
of kindness which has become strong. If a mother has seen this
expression upon the face of her son or her daughter then she can address
to life the words of Simeon: “Now let thy servant depart in peace for
mine eyes have seen thy glory.” For the glory of life is the harmony
between its two fundamental powers—conquest and devotion: self-assertion
and self-sacrifice. In every new phase of the ethical development of
mankind the cultural problem is this harmony and the cultural profit is
not the per-dominance of one of the two but the perfected synthesis of
both.
This problem has now become actual, through the woman movement, for the
feminine half of mankind, after the _unconditional_ spirit of sacrifice
has obtained for centuries as the indispensable attribute of
womanliness. In the first stage of the woman movement the majority of
the “emancipated” were still determined by their spirit of sacrifice,
which they aspired to combine with their outside professional work. This
generation lived _beyond its strength_. The younger generation of to-day
does not believe that God gives unlimited strength. For they have seen
that those who live unceasingly beyond their strength finally have no
strength left, either for others or for themselves. And they know that
in the long run one can live only upon his own resources and these must
be conserved and renewed in order to suffice. But this knowledge makes
the problem, which in the course of days and years appears in manifold
different forms, only more difficult of solution: the problem to find
the right choice in the collision between family duties, duties toward
oneself and duties toward society; the choice which shall bring with it
the essential enhancement of life.
The conflict is thus solved by some feminists: everything called family
ties and family feeling is referred to the “impersonal” instinctive
life, while our “personality” expresses itself in intellectual activity,
in study, in creation, in universally human ends, in social activity,
etc. And since the principle of emancipation is certainly the freeing of
the “personality,” it follows from this idea, in connection with _this
definition of the personality_, that the liberated personality must
place the obligations of the intellectual life absolutely above those of
the family life; the outside professional work above the work in the
home. In a word, the earlier definition of _womanliness_ ignored the
_universal human_ element, the present definition of _personality_
ignores the _womanly_ element in woman’s being. The last solution of the
problem is quite as one-sided as the first.
The “principle of personality,” as it has just been described is
entertained especially in America. In Europe there are still women who
reflect deeply upon their own being and—who have a depth over which they
may meditate! These women have not yet succeeded in simplifying the
problem which is the central one of their life. They know that not only
do instincts, impulses of the will, feelings, form the strongest part of
the individual character which nature has given them, but also that this
part determines their thinking and creating power—their whole conscious
existence. They know that their character receives its peculiarities
through the development which they themselves accord to one or another
side of their individual temperament. In one personality the
intellectual life will predominate, in another the emotional: in one the
ethical, in another the æsthetic motive. The personality becomes
harmonious only when no essential motive is lacking, when all attain a
certain degree of development, a harmony which is as yet only so won
that no motive receives its _greatest possible development_. Such a
harmony has long been the especial characteristic of the most beautiful
womanhood, while the most significant men have ordinarily achieved their
superior strength in _one_ direction, at the cost of harmony in the
whole. If now women believe that they can achieve the strength of men
without, for that reason, being obliged to sacrifice something of their
harmony, then they believe their sex capable of possibilities which thus
far have been granted rarely and then only to the exceptional in both
sexes. What experience shows is: the greater harmony of single women in
a _limited_ existence as compared with the lack of harmony in the lives
of daughters, owing to the irreconcilable problems which their _richer_
existence brings with it. For these problems must be solved, at one
time, by sacrifice of intellectual, at another, by sacrifice of
emotional values. In every case, the sacrifice leaves behind it, not the
joyful peace of fulfilled duty, but the gnawing unrest of a duty still
ever unfulfilled. Every woman who has a heart knows it is at least quite
as important a part of her personality as her passion for science
perhaps. If for example she is obliged to surrender to another the
loving service of a sick father in order to pursue scientific
researches, then her heart is quite as certainly in the sick-room as, in
case of the opposite choice, her thoughts would have been in the
laboratory. By calling one factor “instinct” and the other
“personality,” nothing is in reality gained. Theorising ladies can
easily write—the paper is forbearing. But human nature is of flesh and
blood. And therefore thousands of women grapple to-day with tormenting
questions:—When we women shall belong entirely to industrial work and to
the social life, who then is left for the work of love? Only paid hands.
What becomes then of the warmth in human life when such a division of
labour is established that kindness becomes a profession, and the rest
of us shall be exempt from its practice because our “Personality” has
more important fields for the exercise of its strength? What does it
signify to live for society when we come to the service of society with
chilled hearts? If the warmth is to be preserved then we must have
leisure for love in private life, a right to love, peace and means for
love. Only thus can our hearts remain warm for the social life. Can the
whole really profit if we sacrifice unconditionally that part of the
whole which is nearest us? Can our feeling of solidarity increase toward
mankind when we pass by exactly those people to whom we could, by our
deeds, really show our sympathetic fellow-feeling?
The woman whose instinct life is still strong and sound, whose
personality has its roots deep in life—which means not social life
alone—she also understands how to determine what life in its deepest
import purposes with her; she knows how she serves it best, whether by
remaining in a position where she fulfils her personal obligations as
part of a family or by seeking another position where she fulfils this
obligation as a member of society.
It is true the erroneous idea still prevails in many homes that the
daughter must willingly sacrifice her social task for the family, a
sacrifice which the family would never even wish on the part of a son.
But the assurance that the daughter _could_ have made another choice
instils in the family, unconsciously, a new conception of her sacrifice,
and gives to herself the courage to assume a position in the home other
than that she held at the time when no choice remained to her. If the
total of efficacious daughterly love of to-day and earlier times be
estimated, this total would not prove less now. But it is now given
rather in a great sum; earlier, on the contrary, in many small coins.
Because of the professional work of the daughter, there are now often
lacking in the home the ready obliging young hands whose help father and
brother so willingly engrossed; the cheerful comforter, the admiring
listener. But in a great hour the daughter or sister gives now often a
hundred times more in deep, personal understanding. One draws a false
conclusion when one thinks that the more closely a family holds together
the more it signifies a corresponding unity and devotion. The young act
in submission because they permit themselves to be cowed by the family
authority which like a steam-roller passed over their wills and their
hearts. But the indignation that they experienced in their innermost
hearts, the criticism which they exercised among one another, were not
less bitter than that which they to-day openly utter.
The home life of fifty years ago was a school of diplomacy; it
especially served to oppose cunning to the father’s authority, and the
mother often taught the children to use this weapon of weakness. Now the
father does not wish to make himself ridiculous by saying: “I forbid
you,” for the daughter answers: “Well, then, I will wait until I am
twenty-one.” The threat, “I disinherit you,” recoils from the
determination of the daughter, “I can work.” Only in a distant province,
in a little town, or among the “upper ten thousand” of a large city,
where the daughters still often receive a “general education,” which
does not fit them to earn their living, are they occupied all day
without the feeling of having worked. They serve at five o’clock teas,
embroider for charity bazaars, etc. But they also experience the power
of the spirit of the time strongly enough to know that they lead a
selfish life but not a life of self. The lower the scale of riches the
more housework do the daughters have to perform. But as a result of the
patriarchal organisation of labour they still perform this without their
own responsibility, without the joy of independence, without regular
unoccupied time and without one penny at their disposal!
Even in these circles however the spirit of the time is active; such a
daughter leads now in every case a life of much richer content than some
decades ago, when even though middle-aged she was still treated as
ignorant innocence and must allow herself to be extolled to every
possible marriage candidate. She suffers when she sees her mother as the
submissive wife, whose continual according smile has graven lines of
humility about her mouth, whose continually pacifying tone has made her
voice whining. She suffers when the father cuts short a diversity of
opinion with the words, “You have heard what I said—That will do.” She
suffers when her brothers find her “insufferably important” or declare
her new ideas “crazy.” But exactly these new ideas about the right and
freedom of woman, which she encounters everywhere, have given a dignity
to her own being which has its influence even without words. On the
other hand, the fact that the fathers lose one legal right after another
over the feminine members of the family has its effect, so that they
gradually change their tone, the clenched fist falls less and less
frequently upon the table, the disdain is silenced, and even in the
provinces the family life is changing more and more from the despotic
political constitution to the democratic, where each one maintains his
position by virtue of his own personality. There are still men it is
true, who wish to confine “woman’s sphere” to the four “C’s”—“Cooking,
clothing, children, church.” But there is no one who now insists that “a
girl _cannot_ learn Mathematics,” or that it is “unwomanly to pore over
books”—sayings which were still often heard fifty years ago. Certainly
there are still men who accept the cherishing thoughtful care on the
part of the women members of the family as obvious homage. But the men
are becoming more and more numerous who receive these womanly acts of
tenderness with waking joy. Daughters and sisters of earlier times have
pardoned the vices of their fathers and brothers seven and seventy
times; those of the present throw away the fragments of trust and love
which have been irrevocably shattered. The assurance that the daughters
and sisters could do nothing else except pardon, since they were
dependent upon their tormentors, often made the fathers and brothers of
earlier times grossly inconsiderate. The men of to-day will be refined
by the necessity of showing consideration and justice to their daughters
and sisters if they wish to enjoy their presence in the home. Fathers
and brothers have, in a word, gained quite as much spiritually through
the loss of their power to oppress as the daughters and sisters have
gained in being no longer oppressed. And this experience will be
repeated in marriage when man and wife shall be absolutely free and
equal.