Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

It is nearly always the best women who are confronted by the tragic necessity of choosing one sphere or the other, or of dividing themselves in an unsatisfied way between the two; for, the more they increase their demands upon themselves, the more surely do they feel this partition as a half-measure.

Partly by economical necessity, however, partly by the spirit of the age, the choice is more and more often determined in favour of work, when the two alternatives are evenly balanced in a woman’s own feelings; for the emancipation of women has laid the stress of feeling upon independence, social work, creation. This has raised these considerations in the mind of woman to the same extent as it has depreciated those of home life. Want of psychological insight makes the champions of women’s rights candid when they declare that they have never depreciated the tasks of the home, but on the contrary have tried to educate woman for them. Schools of housekeeping deserve all recognition, but as regards creating greater enthusiasm for domestic duties they have not hitherto been signally successful. It is because their enthusiasm has been directed to every manifestation of woman’s desire to work in man’s former sphere, that the calling of wife and mother has now lost in attraction.

Viewed historically, the work of emancipation must be advanced by this one-sided enthusiasm. But now it is a question whether woman, in a new way, will be capable of being inspired by devotion to her purely womanly sphere of activity?

For nothing short of this would in the main be the solution of the question. A return to the old ideal of womanliness would be as unthinkable as it would be unfortunate. A continued struggle to get rid of the ancient division of labour between the sexes is thinkable—and equally unfortunate. That woman should apply her new will to her ancient mission would be the most fortunate solution. But—is this even thinkable?

The answer is unconditionally in the negative as regards exceptional natures, such as now, in their increased vitality and capacity for suffering, beat their heads against the limitation of life which prevents their giving themselves wholly either to love, or to the joy of motherhood, or to the mission of civilisation.

Here we are faced by the fundamental cause of the modern woman’s nervosity. She lives year in and year out above her powers.

She still retains the old consciousness that a mother ought to be unselfishly absorbed in her mission; that she ought to repose in it with a profound calm; that she ought therefore to allow the inner voices, which urge her to follow her instinct of personal development, to remain unheard. Added to this, she has the new consciousness that the bringing-up of a child demands the same undivided attention as the production of a work; that the child is just as sensitive as the work to a divided mind, a wandering attention. She wishes, as an authoress has aptly said, “that she could be at the same time the mother of past ages: the patiently bearing caryatid, who was always in her place, with the bowl ready for the child’s thirsty lips; and the mother of the present day: ever on the move, seeking out all new paths, quenching her thirst at all the springs of life.” She becomes more and more unique, by being ever more firmly and delicately individualised, and in the process her desire increases to live her own life in every direction. But at the same time her feeling of community with the race increases, and therewith her consciousness of responsibility as mother and human being becomes more and more aroused. The more “egocentric” she has become, the less does she remain a family-egoist. The demands of her personality become ever more definite, ever wider but at the same time more fastidious in their choice, ever more difficult to satisfy. Her growing sense of personal dignity imposes on her an ever stronger self-control—while her whole being is quivering with an ever more delicate sensitiveness.

And upon this new woman, who is already the embodiment of unrest, thirst for life, and suffering, the hungry, violent spirit of the present day flings itself like a cat seizing a bird. A hundred times a day such a woman is forced to subordinate the claims of personality to those of society; a hundred times the will of her personality has to elude her feeling of responsibility. Perfected methods of work may spare her hands and her footsteps, but they cannot prevent her eyes from watching with increasing disquiet the balance wherein affection, sympathy, and responsibility are weighed against her most intimate longing, her creative joy, her thirst for solitude, and her self-development. And as first one side of the balance rises and then the other, it will always seem to her that the heavier one contains a piece of living flesh cut from her heart; while the side which is—for the moment—lighter has nothing but dead, though perhaps golden, weights.

The brain-woman’s time-tables know nothing of collisions. Her train-schedule is clear: nursing institute and kindergarten, school and dormitory for the children, whose number is fixed according to the requirements of society. The meals are served automatically from a common kitchen; the housekeeping is done by adding up the cash-book. In a costume designed for work or athletics, she goes to her study. When the work is done, there is five minutes’ conversation on the telephone with each of the children; two hours’ exercise in the open air. In the afternoon, ten minutes’ conversation on the telephone with her husband, thirty-five minutes’ pause for reception of ideas; the evening is given up to meetings of a utilitarian or social nature. On Sundays, the husband and children are invited, when three hours are set apart for the elimination of their defects, the rest of the time for profitable amusement. Such a woman never has a thought of the children while at work; never wants to snatch ten minutes’ extra chat with her husband, never has promptings at night. She wakes refreshed after the hygienic number of hours’ sleep; everything goes like clockwork—better indeed, for the woman of the future is never behind or ahead of time. But love’s selection will probably not tend towards any great increase of this type, whose present representatives seem physically and psychically so little affected by motherhood, that for their part one is inclined to believe in the stork! And with the other poor, weak, and “sensual” creatures the blood will no doubt continue to be “a strange sap,” which makes the head hot with anguish when it ought to be cool for thought; which forces the heart to beat with longing, when it ought to be still for deciding; which makes the nerves quiver with anxiety, when they ought to be tense for creation.