Franka was in fact not present in the hall. All day long she had denied herself to every one, so that she might devote her time uninterruptedly to the preparation of her address. She had not even gone to the hall at the beginning of the exercises, but had asked to be called only when it was her turn to speak.
The moment had now arrived. She stepped out on the platform.
A murmur of admiration swept through the hall. She looked classically beautiful in her trailing pure white gown with its long, winglike sleeves, with no other adornment than a pearl necklace and the usual small bouquet of violets at the heart-shaped opening of her bodice. Her face was pallid in contrast to the black diadem of her tresses, coiled high on her head. As she stepped forward, loud applause broke out. She acknowledged it, without smiling, with a graceful inclination and began:—
“Ye young maidens, listen to me!” Just as Helmer had suggested, she delivered her proem and then repeated the argument of her first speech in which she took as her text the injunction: “We are here to share in man’s thought,” added to Goethe’s “We are here to share in men’s love.”
“Since she had thus spoken,” she added, “the domain had widened out ever more and more,—the domain which woman had conquered for herself inch by inch,—and the time was rapidly approaching when young womanhood was also to share in man’s work, even in his political work. Now the important question was not as formerly to win positions for themselves, but it was important for them to make themselves capable and worthy of filling the places waiting for them. In many countries—Australia, Finland, Norway, and other lands—the doors of Parliament have been thrown open to women as electors and elected; probably little by little the other countries would follow. Probably, also, women—if once they entered deliberative bodies—would be entrusted with official positions, and the ministries would not remain closed to them. In short, equal rights and equal positions would be theirs along the whole line: simply a terrible state of things, unless we have sufficient imagination to conceive of simultaneously altered forms of society and a more highly developed community. The great distrust and displeasure, ordinarily felt against any proposed change in conditions, are derived from the fact that the environing conditions are supposed to be unchanged, and a harsh dissonance is experienced, just such an one as a discordant tone must give in a well-tuned instrument.
“Only one example: a woman as an executioner—what a horrid picture. Restrain your emotion—if ever woman finds her place among the lawgivers of the land, capital punishment will surely be abolished.
“Do you fully realize what is the gist of this question? Whether our sex shall share in the direction of institutions and events is not merely a question of the improvement of women’s lot, but it is also that of the improvement of man’s lot. All the virtues which are entrusted to our charge, and which are supposed to be superfluous in public affairs, wholly conducted from the masculine side,—mildness, gentleness, moderation, purity, the power to endure without complaining, and to love with utter devotion,—all these virtues we must carry intact into the new circles of activity. Before all, however, we must strive to possess them, indeed; those virtues in a large measure are only ascribed to us in poems.
“But that is not sufficient. If women are to enjoy equal rights with men in deliberation and action, then they must also appropriate those characteristics that are generally regarded as exclusively masculine virtues: courage, steadfastness, energy, resolution, logical thought. On the other hand, they must beware (thinking thus to legitimate their claim to equal rights) of adopting those failings which are regarded as masculine prerogatives: habits of drinking and brawling, brutality, harshness, intemperance. If the emancipation of women develops in this direction, as its opponents at the outset generally believed to be its tendency, then it would be no blessing—it would be a curse. But this will not happen. For humanity develops upward. And the coöperation of both sexes in all callings will have as consequences that each will adopt the virtues characteristic of the other and will drop the faults and vices hitherto regarded as special privileges, so that they themselves and the practice of their callings will be thereby ennobled. Then there will not be mannish girls and coarse, manlike women, and no effeminate men, but complete human beings of both sexes, standing on a loftier plane!”
Here Franka was interrupted by applause. As she stood there in her thoroughly gracious womanliness, in her absolutely feminine dignity, at the same time performing her great mission with such unshaken conviction, she seemed, indeed, to be the personification of that ideal—of combined tenderness and strength—which she had conjured up before the audience.
She continued speaking for some time longer. She depicted what had been gained in positive social advantage by the participation of women in the social duties of the present day, now that this movement was really on the fair road to accomplishment. The battle against one of the worst foes of humanity—alcoholism—had resulted in its greatest victories in countries where women exercise an influence on the making of laws. The war against another of the shameful blots on our civilization—the sexual slavery of women; this is also to be eradicated only where pure and blameless women have the courage to look the infamous evil in the face, to call it by name, and to lead the revolt against it. Dueling and war are two functions in which the feminine sex are forbidden to take part, because they stand in absolute opposition to all those qualities and feelings that characterize the feminine half of mankind. If now this half should gain their due influence in the conduct of public life, then those two deadly modes of settling disputes would no longer remain legitimate. “The mission of woman, thus conceived, is anticipated and poetically symbolized by the sovereign figure of the Madonna trampling a dragon under her dainty foot.”