Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

When nature formed the instinct of the race, woman remoulded it as love; when necessity made the dwelling, woman transformed it into the home. Her great contribution to culture is thus affection.

And this work is in truth great enough to counterbalance man’s contribution—but not to make it worthless.

Fortunately we hear less and less about man’s “tyranny” having robbed woman of the chance of also proving her powers within his sphere of activity. It is more and more recognised that in the struggle for existence necessity decreed that woman’s social work should take the form of home work. The same necessity has now—in the main—liberated the powers that were confined in home work, although woman has never, at any time, been excluded from the use of her mental gifts. Such use was, however, obviously an occasional one, so long as the total of her activity belonged to another sphere.

It is from the point of view of their now emancipated personality that women—and many men on their behalf—demand the right of employing these personally-human powers in social work. They point in particular to the neglect of the State in that sphere of duty, which is already theirs in the home, namely, that of protecting and improving the existence of the young and of the weak. And men are beginning to see that, the more fixedly society is organised, the more indispensable will be the co-operation between all its parts, if the social organism is really to fulfil its purpose, the welfare of all; they see that the new forms both of State help and self-help, which are now being sought after with increasing consciousness of purpose, cannot be adjusted to actual needs unless woman is able to co-operate with man in every department and take part in the legislation which is to decide the welfare of herself and of her child.

But that the organisation of society has now progressed so far that man is beginning to look for woman’s help, must not be taken by women as a reason for putting the whole blame for the slow development of society on men. This slowness results in an equal degree from the hitherto existing nature of woman and of man, from the limitations of both, and from their both being bound by the laws of development. Progress towards higher conditions depends in an equal degree on transformations in the nature of both, the ideals of both, the means and aims of both in the furtherance of culture. The very beginning of these transformations is the education women give to the new generation, which is afterwards to make the laws, to arrange the work, and to determine consumption according to the needs they bring with them into life and the virtues they have learned to love at home.

Our time is probably more conscious of its own shortcomings than any other. But nothing is more revolting to one’s sense of justice than when this consciousness takes the form of women’s megalomania as regards their own omnipotence for altering the course of the world.

Following on nature’s rough division of the race, nature and civilisation in conjunction have produced a finer one, that of creator on the one side and material on the other. Next to being one’s self a creator, it is a great thing to be worthy material in a creator’s hand. And enhancement of culture in a spiritual as well as a material sense is brought about by the creators’ success in dealing with their material. When that material is human, this means that the creators—or leaders—are successful in converting the rest into real collaborators with will and judgment of their own. Flocks driven on by shepherds, or masses of humanity led by one no more remarkable than themselves, have never had lasting effects on the course of civilisation. Such effects only follow when a creator fires the multitude with the enthusiasm of new aims, or teaches them to ennoble the means by which they may attain ends worthy of aspiration.

Thus, if women are to give the development of society a direction wholly different from that which man has given it, this will depend on the appearance among women of leaders who shall point the way to higher aims and employ purer means.

But what gives us reason to expect this of women? The reason cannot be sought elsewhere than within the sphere of their own creations, love, motherliness, the home, domestic economy. If it can be shown that women have brought all these to the full perfection of which they are capable, then there will really be good reason to believe in their miraculous power in the organisation of society.

But even if we fully admit the hindrances which man’s ordering of society, his legislation, his nature have placed in the way of women—is there a single thoughtful woman who can maintain that she herself, or that women in general, have nevertheless done all that they could within their own special sphere; that they have used to the utmost the opportunities they have possessed? What conscientious woman does not perceive that the majority still bungle the great discoveries of their sex, by the way in which they act as guardians and educators of children, as lovers, wives, makers of homes, housekeepers! In every department they lack art and science, clearness of view and circumspection. Frequently they do not possess the first conditions for intensifying and refining a happy love; that of bearing and bringing up worthy children; that of attaining the greatest sum of material comfort for the members of the family with the least expenditure of force and of means; that of arranging the spiritual balance-sheet so that the highest possible enhancement of life will be the net profit. Exactly as the majority of men only slowly and partially receive and transmit the thoughts, the works of beauty, the discoveries that their leaders bring them, so also do women slowly and partially receive the leading ideas in their sphere.